


Return To The Peacekeepers

by A_Damned_Scientist



Series: Return to the Peacekeepers [1]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Consensual Kink, F/M, Gratuitous Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 02:36:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16986543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Damned_Scientist/pseuds/A_Damned_Scientist
Summary: What was meant to be a short trip to an alternate reality leads to unforeseen complications as Aeryn has to pretend to be a Peacekeeper while she tries to find John and young D'Argo.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Time/setting: about 18 monens after PKW. 
> 
> This story is in two parts: Return To The Peacekeepers and Return To The Uncharted Territories. The second part will make very little sense if you haven’t read the first. Part 1 can be read as a stand-alone, if you felt so inclined. Those of you who make it to the end of the second part (when I post it) will notice the possibility is left open for a Part 3. As yet I have no ideas about what might be in such a sequel, so it is best to assume that it’s not going to happen. 
> 
> Plot-With-Porn. A LOT of porn. I really mean it. This is a kink-fic and as such the characters have been bent out of shape a little to make it work. The first chapter or two might seem like porn-free action/adventure, but after that it goes downhill hard and fast. And a lot of it is kinky. Although everybody has their own kinks, hopefully I’ve catered to most tastes somewhere along the line within the confines I set for myself of being adult and consensual. Fair warning: Hardcore J/A-for-ever shippers are not going to like this much. Some eagle-eyed readers may notice that some of the smutty scenes bear a resemblance to smut in some other fics I’ve written. This is because, believe it or not, after a while I just couldn’t be bothered thinking up new ways to describe the inevitable slot a tab b scenarios – I got bored and wanted to focus on the plot, such as it is! :laugh: don’t judge me, at least not for the self-plagiarism aspect! 
> 
> The story was inspired by a number of requests for fic on Terra Firma. One was for kinky fic, one for a fic where Aeryn has to go undercover in the PKs to look for D’Argo/John, and another for a fic to bring back Larraq without breaking with canon. Lastly, JJ’s SC109 ‘A Minor Character’ challenge provided me with the shove to get it finished. 
> 
> There is also a fair bit of angst in this fic and even more in its sequel. 
> 
> EXTREME SMUT, SOME ANGST, NOT (conventionally) J/A SHIPPY! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING! 
> 
> Thanks to Vinegardog for stalwart beta duties including being candid enough to tell me when something was just Too Much to suspend disbelief over. And for persuading me not to hit delete on the whole thing. And then for beta reading the thing all over again once I’d rewritten it. 
> 
> Not mine, no money made, any resemblance to the characters in Farscape is purely coincidental. 
> 
> And now, one last warning. This fic is very, very smutty and may upset J/A shippers. Caveat Lector.

“I’ve worked it out!” John was beside himself with excitement as he bounced into the central chamber aboard Moya and up to Aeryn, who was seated at the main table.

“What have you worked out?” Aeryn asked with an indulgent smile as she finished feeding their eighteen monen-old son, D’Argo, his midday meal.

“How to get back to Earth – how dad and the family can meet little D’Argo!” John explained, settling into the seat beside D’Argo, addressing Aeryn with infectious enthusiasm.

“But you closed the wormhole,” Aeryn pointed out equably, feeding D’Argo the last spoon of his mush and stacking spoons and bowls as she tried not to smile too indulgently at her husband. “You can’t reopen it, you said...”

“Yeah, I closed it in THIS reality,” John conceded, his excitement brimming over despite his words. “So what I need to do is go down a wormhole to a reality just a little different to this one, one where I haven’t done that, and then we can catch the wormhole in that reality back to our Earth. Simple!”

“Simple?” she stated with a sigh and a frown.

“Well, relatively so,” he equivocated.

“Well, do you think it’s safe...?” she probed gently but insistently. ~~~~

“Of course, we’d only be passing through the other reality. We’d only need to be there long enough to catch the other wormhole, maybe for a few macrots. Nobody would even know we were there.” John declared, his boundless confidence and enthusiasm returning.

“Fine, if you’re sure,” Aeryn conceded. “Make preparations and we’ll give it a go when you are ready. But only if you are sure it is safe.” She added, trying to ignore the ‘rattlers’ in her stomach, warning her that something was bound to go horribly wrong with his plan.

@@@

“Can you point that light a bit more in there?” John’s muffled voice, but not his arms, head or shoulders, emerged from the service hatch in the floor of the transport pod, just in front of the piloting position. “Yah, that’s it!” John encouraged Aeryn as she adjusted the angle of the torch ever so slightly.

“I knew we should have brought my Prowler,” she harrumphed. Something had, of course, gone horribly wrong. And here they were, sojourning in a reality not quite their own on a malfunctioning transport pod.

“Well,” John scowled as he extracted his head and upper torso from the duct work. “But then you’d also know that we’d have ended up as soup if we had?”

Aeryn huffed, not liking it when John pointed out an error she had made, but conceding, at least to herself, that he was correct. The Prowler had not been an option for this expedition, John’s module even less so.

“We can fly, up to a point, but we’re going to need to land on Enstor,” John explained, wiping his hands clean on a rag.

“If we can land on Enstor, we can go down the wormhole?” she suggested, jiggling D’Argo on her hip to entertain him.

“I wouldn’t like to take the pod through a wormhole in this state. We need to get some 2Kay wire and a new gyro sensor,” John explained with an unhappy sigh.

“So can you fix it?” Aeryn asked, arching an eyebrow, irritated that his prediction of only spending a few macrots in this reality was turning to dren.

“I don’t mean to imply that you have limited tech skills, but you could fix it,” John nodded. Her eyebrow arched higher. John mumbled and averted his gaze, realising his faux pas. “Sorry babe. No, I mean it shouldn’t be a problem. We’re lucky Enstor looks just as much like the bog standard, Sebacean-friendly commerce planet in this reality as it did in ours. I told you we hadn’t gone far.”

“Fine,” Aeryn sighed, resigning herself to spending longer here than they had planned. Still, there was always an upside. An idea came to her. “I’d actually like to go and get some gifts for your father and sister – some…  soupveneers?” And, she thought to herself, maybe an outfit or two that wasn’t leather to wear once they reached Erp.

“Soup? Oh, souvenirs! Yeah, great idea. Hey, how about I take the sprout and get the parts for the pod, you go get want you want in peace?” John suggested, most likely trying to placate her. She decided that she would accept his attempt at a behavioural apology.

“Thank you, John,” she leant in and kissed him affectionately on the cheek.

“And it shouldn’t take long, just a couple of arns,” John returned her affection with a stroke of her cheek and a few light, brief kisses of his own. “We’ve sixty days till Pilot expects us back, we’ll barely notice a few arns delay.”

@@@

Half an arn later John and Aeryn were walking out of the reception centre at the spaceport on Enstor, mingling with the light crowds, John bumping D’Argo along as he carried their son on his hip. To Aeryn’s enormous relief, nobody seemed to be paying them any attention at all.

“General commerce area is that way,” John nodded towards a larger cluster of buildings to their left. “Whereas D’Argo and me are bound for the service area over there.” He nodded towards the large garage like building to their right, adjacent to the spaceport.

“Hmm,” Aeryn leant in, around D’Argo, and locked lips with John, revelling in the taste, smell and touch of him.

“Mama eating dada!” D’Argo exclaimed. The two lovers separated, both laughing as Aeryn ruffled her son’s hair. ~~~~

“And now Mama going to eat you!” she teased him playfully, leaning in to kiss her son on the cheek.

“HA!” D’Argo whooped happily. John laughed and ruffled his son’s hair too.

“OK babe,” John chuckled as Aeryn took a step back, although she was still reluctant to walk away. She laced her fingers with John’s and took another step back. “Catch you in an arn at the refreshment house over there on the corner.” John added as they eased apart till their arms were outstretched, their fingers still laced, albeit barely so.

“Don’t be late,” Aeryn demanded, eyes locked on his.

“Love you!” John told her as their fingers finally parted. They didn’t say goodbye, after all, but that didn’t make partings, no matter how brief and temporary, any easier.

“Love you too,” she answered and then she turned and walked away.

@@@

An arn and a quarter later Aeryn sat at an outside table, near the entrance to the refreshment house where they had agreed to meet. She was growing slightly annoyed at John’s poor time keeping. She sipped her juice and rifled idly through her bags to pass the time. Inside she checked over the presents she had bought for both of John’s sisters, for Jack, for Bobby....  and a couple of new outfits for her, some of which also served as sort of gifts for John, in that she was sure he would be delighted to see her in them. Or peel her out of them.

A familiar engine sound distracted her and made her look skywards: Three Marauders, flying in close formation, shot skywards from the spaceport, making for orbit. She always liked seeing and hearing Prowlers or Marauders in flight. It touched something deep inside her that had not been washed away by six cycles spent away from the Peacekeepers.

As the ships disappeared from view, she returned her attention to her juice, her purchases and fuming about John’s tardiness.

After another quarter arn, she was beyond fuming and was growing positively concerned by John and D’Argo’s continued absence. 

“Anything I can get for you, miss?” asked the Interion waiter, pausing in front of her table.

“No... yes! Have you seen my… husband and son?” She enquired. “He looks like a Peacekeeper but isn’t, blue eyes, ready smile, the child is about a cycle and a half old, black hair, grey eyes?”

“Your husb… they’re with you?”  The waiter blanched. He pulled out the second chair at her table, sat and leant in close. Aeryn thought it oddly familiar but did not comment.

“Well,” he whispered, glancing around as though to check nobody was in earshot. “The PK pressgang was on planet this morning.” Aeryn felt a dread sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I saw them take a Sebacean male of fighting age and the child in arms with him…. About 45 macrots ago? In the alley over there?” Aeryn felt her head swimming. This couldn’t be happening! If she wasn’t made of far sterner stuff, she might even have felt faint.

“Thank you!” Aeryn gasped, taming the rush of blood from heart to head. She slammed down a twenty credit note in a daze. “Look after my bags, I’ll be back!”

Aeryn stood, unholstered her pulse pistol and rushed over to the alley. It was deserted. Breathing laboured, forcing herself to stifle a single tear and a growing sense of nausea, she glanced all around for something, anything.

There were signs of a scuffle: two overturned rubbish bins, one broken. And there, in the dirt, in a dark corner, what looked like John’s satchel. She picked it up, heart in her hands and mouth as she inspected it. It was indeed his bag! She turned it over and opened it up. Inside was a coiled length of wire and a gyro stabiliser! And D’Argo’s favourite toy animal. A tear finally pooled at the corner of her eye. She brushed it away with the back of her hand. She had no time for such personal indulgences. They could come later, once she had found John and D’Argo and restored their freedom to them.

Fear and rage gripped Aeryn as she rushed towards the spaceport, pausing only to retrieve her own bags from the waiter as she went. 

“Captain Xhalax Sun, Peacekeeper Special Ops!” she bluffed, storming into the spaceport’s despatch office. “I need to know what Peacekeeper vessels you have on planet or in orbit!”

“What, umm..?”The harassed, terrified tech replied, recoiling slightly behind their desk on being confronted by an angry Peacekeeper.

“NOW!” Aeryn barked.

“But there aren’t any that I know of... just you...”

“There were three Marauders earlier!” she snapped.

“Th... Those three Marauders, the pressgang... they left an arn ago.”

“Show me your vid feeds of when they came through to leave!” Aeryn demanded with a snarl. The tech seemed reluctant, but knew better than to deny an order from an angry PK captain. He tapped some buttons and turned the screen. The first vid feed confirmed her worst fears. On the grainy playback she watched as a unit of half a dozen black-helmeted PK troopers was seen, escorting a group of maybe a dozen local Sebaceans, mostly young teenagers. But among them, shackled at wrist neck and ankle, shuffled John! And, at the head of the group, ensuring John’s cooperation, were the shackles and guns not enough, one of the troopers carried an unusually passive D’Argo! Aeryn could only guess that a stun gun or threat had been used on the child – the clip didn’t last long enough for her to be sure. But it was enough for her to know what her next move must be.

“Frell!” she hissed. “Thank you!” she added, to the consternation of the tech, “My transport pod will be taking off immediately!” she announced as she hurried from the office.

She was only an arn behind, she told herself as she prepped the pod for take off. The Marauders would surely be rendezvousing with another, larger craft to process the new recruits. They would surely still be in the system, if not in orbit, she told herself as she punched the controls, lifting off in the pod in pursuit of her husband and son. She still had time. She would not entertain any other possibility.

Aeryn’s hands played frantically over the controls as she reached orbit and started to scan for other craft. With a growing feeling of despair, bordering on nausea, she fought against accepting the conclusion which was staring her in the face: There were no other PK ships in orbit, or even in the close vicinity of the planet!

Aeryn exhaled heavily, ran long fingers through her hair, gently tugging, trying to anchor herself in reality with the slight pain she was inflicting on herself. She bit her lip and shook her head. What should her next move be?

There seemed no other option available to her in order to find D’Argo and John but to look for the nearest PK ship and try and bluff her way aboard, to use all her skills and experience to go undercover, to pretend to be a Peacekeeper once again. And then to work from the inside to find them.

So much for just spending a few macrots in this reality before happily travelling onwards to Earth! If she wasn’t so scared for John, she would have been furious with him.

@@@


	2. Two

“Lieutenant Aeryn Sun,” she ventured the rank she expected she might have reached over the last few cycles and proffered her old ident chip to the Officer Of The Flight Deck.

She could scarcely believe her luck to have found a command carrier in the outer reaches of Enstor’s system. It had taken her only three arns to reach it. And, as it appeared to be the only Peacekeeper vessel in the system, she could not conceive that her son and husband had been taken anywhere else. Surely this would be where she would find them?

“I know who you are,” the officer confirmed. Maybe the alternate her had recently been stationed on this carrier? He didn’t seem to mean that she was the infamous ex-outlaw Aeryn Sun, as she might have expected back home. “What’s with the pod?” The officer snorted, eyeing her ride.

“I was in combat,” she treated him to her best basilisk stare and was gratified to notice his body language and facial expression immediately began to turn submissive, as it should be towards a pilot, far less an officer of whatever rank she was. “My Prowler was rendered non-operational. So I requisitioned that.”

The deck officer swiped her ident chip and frowned. “This... this isn’t in order.” He stammered. She guessed he was terrified to question an officer, but still knew his duty was to do so.

“What do you mean?” She blustered in feigned effrontery, as would be expected of her.

“Well, Lieutenant, it’s showing you as Officer Sun, Pliesar Regiment.”

“Chip must have been fried when I got shot down.” She shrugged. So, she was a lieutenant? Good, that would make it easier for her to throw her weight around and find John and D’Argo.

“Fine,” the officer nodded, clearly still uneasy at having to confront a senior officer. “Best go along to records and get yourself a new one. Then the quartermaster and get yourself a new uniform!”

“Are you telling me what to do?” She scolded the impertinent sub-officer once more. When he stammered and cast his eyes downwards, she followed up with an order: “And that pod is now an asset of my unit. Nobody is to do anything except park it without my explicit permission! Understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” he confirmed with an expression showing suitable deference.

“Good,” she nodded then, head held suitably, arrogantly high, she marched off the hangar deck.

@@@

Aeryn peered over the records officer’s shoulder as the young, blonde female tech made her a new ident chip. So, according to what she could see on the screen, in this reality, she was Senior Lieutenant Aeryn Sun, currently assigned to Special Operations, the Black Ghosts, and stationed aboard this very carrier! That would explain why the deck officer recognised her.

In addition, fortunately for her, Lieutenant Sun was two weekens into a two monen long mission on the Scarran border. She scanned further down the entry to find out where her quarters were and then got another shock: On the roster she was listed as being quartered on lurg nine dekka twelve... which was fine, and as she might have expected. No, what was shocking was that her room-mate was listed as Captain Janko Larraq, also of the Black Ghosts!

Aeryn felt a visceral thrill in the pit of her stomach at the thought that Larraq and her were recreation partners in this reality - she was sure her sex had just softened and moistened ever so slightly at the very thought. She remembered Captain Larraq very well from their brief meeting aboard Moya over five cycles previously. The attraction between them had been immediate and mutual. They had flirted their way around Moya, and she would surely have frelled him before the day had ended, had he not been possessed by the intellent virus and then killed by John. Of course she had never told John how attractive she had found Larraq, or how close she had come to recreating with him. He was so jealous about such things, after all.

“Just another minute or so,” the tech remarked in a bored drawl, shaking her back to the present. “Could you place your hand in the slot to check your biometrics?” Aeryn, somewhat distracted by thoughts of Larraq, complied. A series of lights began to light up green, confirming she was who she claimed to be.

Not that there could be anything between her and Larraq, not now, no matter how attractive he was. Hopefully the Captain was assigned to the same mission as Lieutenant Sun and was off-ship! If not, she was going to have to seek a speedy reassignment of rooms. Or some frelling excellent excuses.

“So, where is Captain Larraq?” She demanded with just the expected level of haughty indifference as she took her new ident chip. She needed to know if she was going to have to avoid him during her stay aboard: the Aeryn Sun in this reality was clearly his regular recreation partner if they were sharing quarters. Good for her, but that being so, Mrs Aeryn Sun-Crichton wanted to avoid bumping into him at all costs.

The records clerk tapped away at her console for a few microts and the answer was revealed: “He’s been off-carrier for two solar days with a Marauder team: Mission classified,” the clerk recited the information, although Aeryn, to her relief, could see for herself that he was not currently aboard. “He filed a two weeken absence statement and requisitioned a one monen stores manifest.”

“Of course,” Aeryn nodded sagely. So she could reckon on two weekens, maybe more, before his return.  Excellent. “One more thing, where are the latest compulsory recruits being processed?” She asked as casually as she could, trying not to betray her deep personal interest in this question above all others.

The tech tapped on her data entry pad and shook her head. “There are no recruits currently being processed on this carrier.” No! That couldn’t be! Frell frell frell!!! Aeryn cursed inwardly. But then where were they, if not here? “But then we only arrived in this system six arns ago,” the tech shrugged. Six arns? Frell her dead! What absolutely stupid, rotten fate, luck, whatever John might call it.

“Fine, what other ships of ours have been here in the last three days?” she tried, rallying herself back to the important central objective.

The tech tapped away again. “That information....  ship movements... I thought so, it’s classified.” Frell, Aeryn cursed inwardly once again. Still, it wasn’t the ships she was looking for.

“Then I need a report on the dispositions of all recruits taken in the last solar days from the Enstor system.”

“Are you joking!?” the clerk blurted out, but crumbled under Senior Lieutenant Sun’s basilisk stare.

“Are you questioning my orders, tech?” Aeryn fumed. “Is it possible to get that information or not?”

“No, no of course I’m not, ma’am…” the tech demurred. “And yes, it should be possible, but...”

“Then get me that report!”

“Of course ma’am, but…. Ummm, well, it might take a few solar days – we don’t have that information in the databanks aboard this carrier.” Frell! Still, better a few days wait than nothing! She should get the information she needed and be off the carrier long before Larraq was even half way to coming back!

“Fine, do whatever you have to do, but this is a Priority Red One order – you are to comm me as soon as you have any news, understood!?” She demanded fiercely.

“Yes, yes ma’am, of course!” the tech replied, clearly totally cowed by the Special Ops Lieutenant.

Aeryn nodded, angry with herself for having to terrorise a lowly tech but satisfied that she had impressed on the woman the urgency of the search. Head held high she turned and marched out of the office, making her way towards the uniform quartermaster. If she was a Black Ghost Senior Lieutenant and she was going to have to hang around on the carrier for a few days, waiting for her request on the ‘recruitment teams’ to be processed, she was frelled if she wasn’t going to requisition the uniform, the weapons and all the other gear to go with that rank.

@@@

An arn later, arms laden with fresh uniforms and a new selection of the best in PK weaponry, large and small, she arrived at lurg nine dekka twelve. With her heart in her mouth, knowing these to be the quarters her doppelganger shared with Larraq, she swiped her new ident chip on the main door lock. The door swished open and she peered inside, ready to turn tail if there was any sign that Larraq was actually at home. Inside it was dark and quiet, with the cold, musty feel of a room undisturbed for a few days. She allowed herself to breathe again as she confirmed that no one was there. She entered, swiped the door shut and locked and, putting down her uniforms and weapons on the cupboard top, she began to explore her new quarters.

There were the usual facilities: a large double bed, some storage units for clothes and other items, some of which contained items which she guessed belonged to her, others to him. Further storage, notably a weapons locker, were perhaps shared. Interestingly, perhaps befitting the quarters of two senior special ops officers, there was also a desk with a private data terminal! Excellent! That would surely come in useful to conduct her own private research to try to find D’Argo and John!

Aeryn placed her new uniforms in the appropriate storage unit and most of her weapons in the weapons storage. Then she moved through to the sanitary annex, where she found there was a waste alcove, and, as befitted the quarters of a captain, a private shower cubicle – quite a large one, she noted – big enough for two occupants simultaneously. A variety of non-Peacekeeper cleansing products adorned the shelves in the annex – a clear indulgence that would only be allowed for disruptors or senior officers.

Aeryn returned to the main chamber, settled at the desk and swiped her ident chip on the data terminal. She had two questions she wanted, no, needed answered straight away: who was she in this reality, and what key events had happened only here that she ought to know about so as not to blow her cover.

First, she checked the highlights of her personal log: So much of it was tedious and she didn’t feel like she was getting anywhere. But then she decided to go back to when it had all begun, to when John had arrived in the Uncharted Territories. Yes! She was on to something. It didn’t take her long to establish that the big divergence in the realities seemed to have happened six cycles earlier. John had apparently never come through the wormhole and, although she had been caught up on Moya during the escape, the prisoners had soon been recaptured. She had returned to Prowler duty with a commendation, one which had ensured her longed-for transfer to Marauder duty a monen later. She scrolled on through the entries, looking for the next item of note.

Nearly a cycle after Moya’s brief escape, she had been the pilot on a Marauder which had gone to the assistance of Captain Larraq and his team. His Marauder had been seriously damaged and he needed urgent transport to a Gammak base. That mission had gone without incident in her personal log, although one monen after her return from the Gammak base to Crais’ Carrier, her transfer request to join Larraq’s team had gone through and she had become a Black Ghost. And presumably, although it wasn’t recorded, at around the same time she had started recreating with Larraq.

She scrolled on to today: At present she was on a monen long mission to the Scarran border sector, mission classified even in her own log, while Larraq was off carrier for three weekens on a different, classified deployment.

Satisfied, for now, with her own backstory, she moved on to recent Peacekeeper history. And there it was, the big one: Two cycles ago, a near disastrous war with the Scarrans had begun. Peacekeeper and allied casualties had been enormous and after six monens of losses, defeat had seemed almost certain. But then a devastating, still classified weapon had been deployed by the Peacekeepers at the battle of Quajaga and an uneasy truce had been in place ever since.

How the frell had they got something like a wormhole without John? Had Crais’s Leviathan project come to fruition? Had Scorpius made a wormhole without John? The details were not recorded.

But she had survived the war.

Aeryn cross correlated the general logs with her personal log. It seemed that she and Larraq  had only escaped the demise of so many of their peers, including, it seemed, Captain Crais, his command carrier and the entire Icarion regiment, by it being a war suited more suited to brute force and numbers than to Special Forces. Larraq’s Marauder team had been deployed to the Uncharted Territories for the duration in order to help protect the Peacekeepers flank from opportunists.

Aeryn looked at the time stamp in the corner of the screen. It was late. Very late. She had learnt a lot, but was growing fatigued. She rubbed her eyes, stretched and yawned.

It had been a long day – she felt tired and grubby. The records techs were doubtless working as fast as they could to find John and D’Argo. She felt slightly guilty contemplating a shower and sleep, but she realised there was little more she could do tonight. Best start again tomorrow, fully rested.

Aeryn peeled off her boots, her civilian leathers, her socks, her tank top and finally her underwear. She wrapped her hair in a towel to keep it dry so she could go straight to bed, the way Jool had shown her to do, then picked up a second towel and headed into the shower.

The warm, sudsy water washed over her, gently sluicing away the dirt and sweat, if not the tensions, of the day. Hopefully a good night’s sleep would help with that, though. She reached for the tap to turn off the water.

“Leave it on,” a male voice smirked from behind her. Aeryn nearly jumped out of her skin. Her heart pounded in her throat as she turned to see Captain Larraq, leaning against the entrance to the cubicle, wearing nothing but an amused, masterful grin. He shouldn’t be here! What was he doing here!?

“I’ll join you. I could do with a good scrub.” Dren! Frell! Hezmanna! He looked even more beautiful than she remembered, but then she’d never seen him naked before. His lean, well-muscled body spoke of power and masculinity.

His lascivious, attentive grin and half-erect cock spoke of a man keen to exercise his power and masculinity.

 A surge of lust raced through her body, suppressed only by her conscience telling her that she was a married woman. She needed to get the frell out of the shower and away from Captain Larraq and his impressive erection!

“I thought you were off-ship…?” she stammered, her mouth turning as dry as her vocal chords as he stepped towards her with obvious intent. Stand her ground, or back up into the corner? She effectively had nowhere to go. The water from the shower started to pour over him as he got close enough to enter its spray.

“Could say the same about you,” he retorted, hands claiming her upper arms, pushing her forcefully but not roughly against the cubicle wall. She could feel his heavy, ragged breaths on her face, smell the musk of a sexually excited male. She stared into his eyes, feeling like a drannit caught in a searchlight as he pressed his wet body against her even wetter one. She felt her breasts squeezed against his muscular chest, nipples tickled by his chest hair. His erection pushed against her abdomen, heavy and insistent.

She needed to think fast. “Janko, I’ve been flying 48 arns straight to get back here…” she gabbled. The feel of full body skin to skin contact was electrifying and enormously distracting to formulating and implementing a plan to avoid getting frelled. “Turn around and I’ll scrub your back,” she suggested, playing for time.

“Shhhh.” His lips crushed against hers, devouring her mouth and choking off her story as his tongue invaded. His stubble was scratchy, rough and exciting against her face, anchoring her in the moment, reinforcing that this was far from a dream. Knowing that she had to seem convincing, she returned his kiss with as much appearance of reciprocated passion as she could manage. Maybe she could knock him out, catch him by surprise with a pantak jab and flee? One of his hands slid across from her arm to her looma, the rough pad of his thumb seeking, finding and stroking her nipple.

Hezmanna that felt good!

Whatever she did, she knew she would have to do it soon.

Or Captain Larraq would surely frell her.


	3. Three

“Aeryn!?” John called out in desperation as he thought he caught sight of her across the crowded hangar deck of what he recognised as a Command Carrier. They had been in transit for arns and now, along with a score of other conscripts, he was being escorted under guard from one of a trio of Marauders. It was small relief to find that they were simply being conscripted. Unlike in his reality, none of the Peacekeepers seemed to know who he was.  

All of the adult conscripts were now wearing control collars, enabling John to carry D’Argo, who fidgeted in fear, still awake despite the late hour.  Once aboard the Marauder, the troopers had soon bored of dealing with a toddler and had placed him with John. John, however, had earlier learnt the hard way not to disobey direct instructions from his guards but his unplanned outburst, calling to Aeryn, earned him another short, sharp shock from the collar.

“No talking!” a sturdily built trooper ordered, prodding him in the back with what felt like some sort of rifle to punctuate his point.

John’s outburst had had the desired effect though: Aeryn, dressed in a fetching burgundy PK special ops uniform, stared his way with a frown. After a microt, as the shock to both of them dissipated, she marched across to the phalanx or new recruits.

“Hold up!” she ordered the guard detail, voice stern and arrogant. “I want to talk to this one.”

The lowly grunts seemed cowed by her, or maybe by her uniform. Their submission was immediately obvious, as they allowed Aeryn to stand in front of John and inspect him.

She stared into his eyes, face an inscrutable mask. John guessed she had to keep up appearances in front of her audience.

“How do you know my name, recruit!?” She ordered, glowering at him.

“I…  it’s me, John...” Her brow furrowed. Oh frell, John thought, she’s either preserving her cover really well or... this really was the Aeryn from this reality. Fate screwing him in the fine print again. “Nothing, I, err, musta heard someone else say, and you.... I thought you might be someone who could help clear up an unfortunate misunderstanding. You see High Command would be very upset if they found out I was being treated like this,” John bullshitted fluently.

She side eyed him. “A likely story.  Officer, debrief this one thoroughly, and then send a report to me.” She waved her ident chip over his data pad to register her identity with the chief guard.

Just then, to John’s horror, D’Argo stirred enough on his shoulder to catch sight of her. He stretched out a grasping hand towards her. “Mama...!” he whined.

“Shhhh!” John tried to soothe the youngster and shield him from seeing Aeryn, or else he was sure this was unlikely to end well.

Aeryn scowled at him for a microt longer, then, to John’s relief, turned away.

“Yes ma’am,” the guard confirmed with a salute as she marched off towards crew quarters. “Come on you lot, stop gawping at the Lieutenant’s eema and MOVE!”

@@@

Aeryn struggled to control her breathing and control her thoughts. Larraq’s mouth was claiming her own in a passionate kiss, his body had her pinned her to the wall, his hands had already taken advantage of their freedom to stray – the one fondling her looma was doing a fine job, while the other was now forcing its way between the wall and her eema. She could even feel the pulse in his cock as it pressed insistently against her belly.

After returning the kiss for just long enough to seem like she was welcoming him home, she pulled her mouth away and wrinkled her nose. “You smell like you’ve been stuck in a Marauder for a week!” she complained, pushing him back from her.

Larraq’s response was to grab a bottle of cleansing lotion and push it into her hands. “I have. Make sure not to miss anywhere, then,” he smirked.

Aeryn’s mouth went dry and she suppressed a gulp. Her breath labouring, her pulse quickening, her cheeks burning, she squirted out a palm full of the cleansing gel, put the bottle on the shelf then mixed the fluid between her hands. Rivulets of water snaked appealingly across his fine, naked physique. What else could she do?

She assessed where to begin. Shoulders first. They felt broad, powerful beneath her hands. She took her time getting them thoroughly clean and then moved lower, to his pecs, which were equally satisfying to wash. After a quick but enjoyable diversion out to his bulging upper arms, her hands slipped lower, onto the ridged planes of his abdomen. He grinned back at her, standing casually and allowing her hands free reign across him.

She would need to kneel to go lower, so bracing her hands against him, flowing down the outer lines of his hips, past the defined Vee at the bottom of his abs, she moved on to his sturdy thighs, ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’ as John would have called it. There she recharged her hands with gel, before sliding hands down to his calves. Satisfied they were clean, her hands slid back up over his knees, eventually returning to the solid muscle mass of his quads.

“You missed a bit,” he smirked. They both knew full well which bit. Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Feeling flustered, she grabbed the bottle of cleansing gel and squirted out a little more, into her palm. She watched, feeling almost detached, as what seemed like someone else’s long fingers curled around his half-firm, bobbing shaft. With a light, gentle touch she slowly slid her hand up and down his length, making sure he was thoroughly clean from base to tip. He hardened and grew beneath her touch, turning into a baton of impressive size and rigidity. Her other hand, meanwhile, cupped his balls and eased the overflow of soapy water around them, noting the way they too responded to her touch by firming and rolling. After a few passes she became aware of Larraq panting and gasping above her, his breath quickening and deepening.  Dren! It sounded like he was about to cum! She’d clearly been more meticulous than she had thought in washing him. She eased off her ministrations, allowing the water to rinse the remaining suds away with the barest minimum of further help from her fingers. His breathing began to normalise.

She so much wanted to lick, to taste, to feel what his cock felt like on her tongue, against the roof of her mouth. She knew she had to resist. It would be an unforgivable personal indulgence. She licked her lips. Her resolve wavered as her pulse quickened and ears burned. She pursed her lips, then lent in to bestow a feathery light, but slow and prolonged, kiss on his warm, velvety tip. It bucked appreciatively in response. That would have to do. It was a tiny indulgence, for both of them.

“That seems clean enough,” she declared. As she licked her lips again, she enjoyed the merest hint of the taste of his salty-sweet precum.

She summoned all of her withering self control. She wanted a mouthful.

“Turn around,” she croaked. “I need to...” her voice trailed off as he pre-empted her and his taut, shapely eema hove into view, just drenches from her eyes.

Purely for the purposes of good hygiene, she took her time to ensure that her fingers thoroughly scrubbed every dench of his eema. It felt as good as it looked.

Finally, she pushed off back to her feet, bracing herself against his back.

He hands splayed out across the planes of his back as she brought her breathing back under control. His back was to her now, so she could easily slip out of the cubicle. She took a half step back, planning to do just that.

He spun, stepping forwards, pinning her back to the wall with his greater mass, hands resuming their assault on her looma and eema, lips clamping down on hers once again.

At least her hands were free. She lifted them to his face, cupped his cheeks and pried their lips apart.

“I’m gonna frell your brains out, Aeryn,” Larraq growled, nose to nose with her as they came up for air. She shivered. She could well believe it. Dren, she was starting to visualise it! To illustrate his point he trailed kisses down her neck, his stubble a rough and exciting tactile reminder of how dangerously exciting she found Larraq. But appealing though his proposition was she knew she had to prevent it coming true! As a Peacekeeper, she had no objection, and she had fancied Larraq from the first microt she had seen him, cycles earlier. But John, her jealous, monogamous husband would never understand or approve.

“Ahhh!” she gasped as his hands kneaded her buttock and tweaked her nipple and his lips sucked on the sensitive skin around her clavicle. “That sounds great,” She clasped his face more firmly between her hands and brought his head back up before his lips could drift lower. A plan had formed in her mind. She would play along but claim to be too tired to frell tonight. She grinned back at him as they rubbed noses and exchanged a succession of pouting kisses. “Buttttttt…..  I’m exhausted. Tomorrow, maybe, when I’ve had some sleep?” she concluded, taking advantage of his momentary discombobulation and the lubrication of the sudsy water to slip out of his grasp.

“Tomorrow, huh?” he smirked back, watching her avidly as she stepped out from under the water, grabbed a towel and began to dry herself. He made no attempt to follow and didn’t seem unduly upset or surprised. Well, it was late. It was a credible explanation. Aeryn breathed a huge sigh of relief as she realised he seemed to be taking her story at face value and in good spirits. Tomorrow she’d have to think of some other excuse, but at least she’d headed off being frelled for now.

Congratulating herself over her success she finished drying herself, unwrapped her hair, hung up both towels, half turned so her back was almost towards him and lifted the dentic tin. She swirled a dentic around her mouth, feeling smug about her successful ploy. 

Strong, muscular arms wrapped around her as Larraq pressed up against her from behind, one hand cupping her bare looma, the other curling round her hip and heading straight between her legs.

Aeryn almost swallowed the dentic as she felt his fingers, aided by the residual moisture from her shower, slide between her folds and set to work on her clit. “Sure I can’t persuade you?” He purred, face burrowing through the mantle of her hair to molest the soft skin at the base of her ear.  No, she wasn’t sure, actually. Her knees trembled and her heart pounded in her ears as he expertly worked her clit and nipple. She felt like jelly in his hands. Her ability to think her way out of the situation short circuited. She realised how turned on she must have been from their clinch in the shower, as she could feel her body was about to climax already! She spat the dentic back into its container and so freed her mouth to let out her suppressed gasp.

“My balls. Need emptying. Tonight.” Larraq growled into her neck as his fingers teased her to a sudden, shivering orgasm.

“Cholak!” Aeryn gasped. Still, at least they hadn’t actually frelled. And it had felt fantastic! But from his actions and his last remark it seemed clear that he still had intent, and wasn’t going to be put off with words alone.

Wriggling from his grip, she handed him the container, “Don’t forget to dentic?” she winked at him as her long fingers curled around his tumescent rod. It wasn’t that she wanted to be unfaithful to John. But surely a handjob didn’t really count? Quite the opposite, she reasoned as she began to stroke his shaft. Especially if it headed off an actual frell. Larraq, his dangerous, sexy eyes locked on hers, slowly and languidly popped a dentic into his mouth. Yes, better a handjob than a full frell, she told herself as his cock bucked in her hand.

But Larraq had other ideas. He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed downwards. Understanding, and not wishing either to compromise her cover or, at the other extreme, offer an actual frell, she glided down to her knees. His huge cock bobbed drenches from her eyes, bucking in time with his pulse. Her fingers guided the tip to her pursed lips. Fingers still slowly gliding up and down his length, she kissed him, then stuck out her tongue and ran it around his tip, once again tasting the salty precum. It looked like she was going to get that mouthful after all. She wasn’t being unfaithful, she told herself as her lips parted then softly but firmly closed around his bell, she was actually trying to avoid frelling him. But she was undercover and had to…  His hands cupped the crown of her head and he drove deeper, until the tip of his cock was at the back of her mouth. Breathing hard through her nose, she took in the full fragrance of his male musk, driving her own hormones heady with lust. She sucked hard and slid her lips in and out across his length, tongue working furiously at the underside of his shaft and bell. The taste of him grew stronger in her mouth, salty and sweet.

She backed off and, turning her wide eyes up towards his downturned grin, her skilled hands stroked his throbbing cock, now wet with her own saliva. If he came over her hair, she would need to wash it. And then wait for it to dry. Which would mean an arn or more of avoiding his advances. There was another alternative.

“I want you to cum in my mouth,” she told him, before sucking him in once again and setting to work on his tip with her tongue. Better her mouth than her pussy, she rationalised. Besides the thought of sucking him off had been lodged in her mind ever since she had been on her knees the first time, soaping him down.

His spasming release was unheralded by any warning, filling her mouth with a torrent of hot, tasty seed. And so much of it! Well, at least she could be sure he hadn’t been recreating with anyone else recently she reflected as a second then a third jet of hot, thick cum hit the back of her throat. She backed off from his cock and swallowed, clearing her mouth to breathe and speak.

“Enjoying yourself?” Larraq smirked.  As a matter of fact, she had been. She arched an eyebrow, nodded slowly and smirked back, but did not verbally reply as she licked the final residue from her lips and swallowed again. Maybe this was the answer? If she could keep Larraq happy with blowjobs and handjobs then maybe she could stay faithful to John and not actually frell Larraq? “Another dentic?” He offered her the tin. She thought about declining, as she didn’t want to lose the taste of him in her mouth so soon, but knew she would regret it in the morning if she did not. She took one, popped it in, allowed it a few microts to do its thing then spat it out as she slid back to her feet.

“So… frell tomorrow. Maybe. If you’re still able,” she winked and grinned back at him as she turned and walked out of the sanitary annex. “But now I’m going to bed… to sleep! You can do what you like.” Not that she had any intention of frelling him in the morning, of course. Well, not much intention, anyway.


	4. Four

“Shhhh,” John soothed the child in his arms, trying to calm his tired and agitated son as their Peacekeeper escort ‘encouraged’ him to step into what looked like a med bay. A couple of their fellow new recruits, along with their escorts, were already there, giving John a good insight into what awaited them within.

“And you are...?” A bored-looking, youngish blonde med tech sighed, not even bothering to look up from her data pad. John put her age as maybe mid-twenties in human years. Yet despite that, he resolved that she was most definitely Not His Type.

“Johan and Dave Cretin,” John supplied, thinking it an apt alias, seeing as it was his wide-eyed optimism about the risks of coming to this reality that had landed them in this fix.

“And you, specifically, are?” the tech repeated, looking up this time and treating John to a dour glare.

“I’m Johan, my son is Dave,” John answered. “Look, there’s been a horrible mistake. We’re not Sebaceans. You don’t want us polluting your precious racial purity.”

“You look like a Sebacean to me.” She shrugged. “You’ll do.”

“We’re not and we won’t,” he tried again. “You’re just wasting your time…”

“Fine. Whatever,” the tech sighed, looking down again to input the information on her pad. “This is a basic medical, so if you could just put the infant down on this couch and sit in that...”

“No, I don’t think so,” John snorted, his ire and natural defiance rising, fed by his righteous indignation against the Peacekeepers in general and their latest assault on his and his son’s freedom in particular. “Your people shanghai me and my kid, then you expect me just to play along and jump when you say so!”

The tech sighed again with the air of someone long suffering who had seen and heard everything before.

“You misunderstand Mr Cretin,” the tech fixed her eyes on him as she drawled in a bored tone which indicated to John that he wasn't the first new recruit to take umbrage at the induction process. The tech lifted their hand, palm away from John, and beckoned with all four fingers. John suddenly became aware that three or four of the guards had begun to slowly converge on him and D’Argo.

“Either you cooperate with me, or...” the tech fixed John with a dead-eyed stare, eyebrows slightly raised. “I conduct my assessment during and after treating your inevitable injuries.”

John quickly assessed his situation. Much though it irked him, he could see nothing to gain and, bearing in mind the involvement of D’Argo in the while frelled-up situation, a lot to lose by continued defiance.

“Those couches, was it?” John asked, nodding towards the two previously indicted medical examination couches. “And I’m really not a Sebacean…”

“Good man,” the tech smirked. “With brains like that you could go far. If you don’t frell it all up first.”

@@@

Aeryn slept fitfully wondering what had happened to John. In her dreams they were in bed together aboard Moya, sleeping contentedly. John spooned against her, his arm wrapped around her in a tender, protective embrace.

His hand cupped her looma and his lips nuzzled the back and side of her neck and shoulder. She could feel his erection pressing lazily between her buttocks. His lips found a particularly sensitive spot and she inhaled sharply. Still half asleep, but feeling an increasing early morning erotic charge, she parted her thighs just enough to allow his cock to slip between the tops of them.

“Nice to have you back, Aeryn,” he rumbled softly in her ear as she felt his length slide along her lips, parting them slightly as it went. One of her hands sought out the hot, velvet tip of his cock while her other hand wrapped over his fingers as they cupped her looma.

“So how did the mission go?” Larraq’s voice purred in her ear. “Why are you back so early?”

Aeryn awoke fully with a start. Dren! She was naked in bed with an equally naked Larraq and they were already entwined in an advanced state of what her husband would call foreplay!

Larraq, not her husband John, slowly rocked his hips, sliding his erect cock back and forth across her pussy and fingertips, while his fingers and thumb teasingly stroked her looma. Aeryn thought fast: If she blew her cover she would likely end in a cell in short order. If she rejected Larraq now she would risk turning her only potential ally in finding John and D’Argo into an enemy. She had to keep her cover in place. Like last night, she had to play along. But he was a male, after all: if she could ‘accidentally’ bring him off before he penetrated her then he would be sated for a while and she could avoid getting frelled.

Her choice was clear. She needed all the help she could get to find her husband and child. She needed Larraq as an ally.

Play-acting at being half asleep, her fingertips put her plan into action. She traced along the underside of his cock, between her thighs. Her touch confirmed her brief impression from last night: he was huge in girth and length, just as she had imagined, cycles before when she had flirted with him aboard Moya. He twitched beneath her touch and groaned in her ear. She could do this, and he’d never realise what she was up to. Her fingers reached his hairless balls, cupping and stroking them. They were tight and full. Again! With her other hand she guided his fingertips to her nipple.

“Mmm, not now,” she mumbled, apropos of Larraq’s question about her mission. "I want to have sex.”

Aeryn feigned a sleepy sigh as she canted and rocked her hips, her mouth falling ajar in a not entirely fabricated groan of carnal pleasure. Her fingers slid up and down Janko’s length, pushing his shaft firmly up against her labia and clit, noting as she did so how wet she had become herself. That way, she reckoned, he would be getting stimulation both from the caress of her fingers and from the sliding contact with her own pussy lips and would be far more likely to climax. It was a dangerous strategy, though, as with each stroke his shaft edged deeper into her folds. Reaching his tip, she ran her fingers playfully around it for a few microts, trying to tease out his climax. Cholak he was so big, perhaps as big as John. And so hard. She remembered the underside of the tip was the most sensitive part of all, so, to try to hasten his climax, she began to stroke firmly there.

“Well I’m glad you’re back,” he growled into the ear he was nibbling. “And your back, hmmm,” he added, He took a moment to kiss, caress and rub against her back in a most compelling manner. “I’ve built up quite a fluid backlog.”

Aeryn’s gasp wasn’t feigned as, on his next backwards stroke, accidentally aided by the pressure from her own fingers, his bulbous head half slid, half popped into her vestibule, stretching her lips and sending a sharp thrill through mind and body.

Cholak that felt good!

He rocked forward, pushing on her inner entrance. Aeryn’s mind raced, trying to think of a way to avoid full penetration as he settled in place, rocking gently to seat and lubricate himself. But holy dren did she feel turned on!

He nuzzled and pulled her into a tighter embrace.

She needed to bring him off now! His gentle rocking continued, teasing them both as his helmet slid a dench or so, in and out of her vestibule. Surely if it was just his cockhead in her entrance, rather than his shaft in her, balls-deep, it didn’t count as a proper frell?

“Yes!” she hissed trying to encourage him not to push deeper. “That’s good! Frell me like that!”

Larraq chuckled and obliged for the next few microts, but still he didn’t cum. Aeryn, on the other hand, could feel that her body was getting pretty close to its own climax.

“A privilege of being your commanding officer,” Larraq purred in her ear, “is I can assign you to recreation duties for the next few days.” Right now Aeryn found that an interesting prospect.

And then he rocked more firmly…. And his length slid into her properly, dench after dench. Aeryn gasped in shock and pleasure. As he pushed past her G-spot she came hard, but still he went deeper. “I’m going to frell you till neither of us can walk.”

Aeryn bit her lip, finding the idea appealing.

His rocking hips beat against her eema now as he pounded hard into her, his huge length filling her thoroughly. His hand possessed her loomas and his lips devoured her neck.

Aeryn was a good soldier. She knew when to admit defeat. She surrendered to the barrage of erotic sensations stimulating her most sensitive parts as Larraq took her from behind in a sleepy, early morning frell.

Without breaking his rhythm, he eased her onto her back, pushing her knee aloft with one arm to enable him to drive deeper. His lips slid down to her nipple where he latched on as though he were trying to suck it clean off!

“Oh yes, that feels so good!” she groaned in total honesty and dereliction. His mouth eased back up until he was kissing her face, skilled fingers taking over from lips on nipple duty. She ground down hard against him, squeezing his cock between her walls in a wave of contractions, almost as though she meant to expel him. If he had been less rigid or large maybe she would have succeeded, but there was no chance of doing so as things stood.

“Uh, yeah!” Larraq groaned. She saw his muscles strain across his shoulders, arms and neck, felt him arching his back, pulling her even tighter. She could feel his cock buck and then he exploded into her, unleashing a flood of swimmers into her womb.  The sensation and realisation pushed her over the edge into a further, shuddering, multiple climax of her own as he rocked again, trying to wring every last scintilla of pleasure out of their coupling.

Slowly their rocking subsided then ceased. Sated, Larraq loosened his grip yet somehow also seemed to pull her closer. Aeryn wrapped her arm over his, pressing back against him. A warm, contented feeling flooded through her mind and body.

Soon they drifted back to sleep, his slowly softening cock still buried intriguingly deeply inside her flooded belly.

@@@

Lieutenant Aeryn Sun was surprised to have been summoned by one of the Command Carrier’s executive Officers just after first meal. Usually the Command Carrier staff tried to avoid any contact with any Black Ghosts who happened to be aboard other than that which was unavoidable to conduct their duties. She guessed it must be something important for them to go out of their way to ask to speak to her.

“Lieutenant Sun, Special Operations,” announced a junior officer, seeing her into the office to which she had been called, being careful not to intrude into her personal space. Three senior members of the carrier staff were already seated around a small conference table. She didn’t recognise any of them.

“Please, take a seat,” a middle aged woman with the rank of senior lieutenant invited Aeryn.

“Lieutenant Sun, thank you for coming. I am Lieutenant Avanco, from the training and recruitment division, this is senior med tech Hadak,” she indicated a worn down looking man of indeterminate age to one side of her, “and this is Lieutenant Mazko from Intelligence.” As Aeryn settled, further minor salutes and pleasantries were exchanged.

“I would imagine you are wondering why we called you here today?” Avanco cut to the point once Aeryn was seated and greeted.

“Indeed,” Aeryn nodded. She was bored already, but there seemed to be nothing for it but to see this meeting through. Maybe she had snubbed someone or said something somebody thought that she shouldn’t have said in the Officers Mess? It was always happening when Special Ops were visiting an unfamiliar carrier. Jealousy, fear, pride... there were so many reasons for the rank and file to take umbrage.

“Do you recall an incident with a new recruit in Marauder hangar three yesterday?” Avanco enquired. Ah, so this was what it was all about. Maybe they had found out something about the strange man who had inexplicably known her name? She had asked to be kept informed about him, after all. Her interest piqued. The prisoner had been an interesting looking male, after all.

“The recruit won’t cooperate, won’t tell us anything.”

“He won’t talk?” Well, that was hardly her problem.

“Well, he talks alright, but most of it is gibberish,” Avanco supplied with frustration born of obvious personal experience.

“Surely that’s a disciplinary issue, nothing to do with Special Ops?” Aeryn sighed. Why were they bothering her with such a trivial matter?

“I agree, but...”

“My medical exam showed that he has got a very strange biology,” Hadak interjected. “His genetics seem almost Sebacean, but his internal organs appear to be Interion.”

“So? Maybe he’s some sort of cross breed?” Aeryn shrugged. She still didn’t really care. This had nothing to do with her. “Still not my business.”

“Well,” Mazko finally cut in. “There’s one or two other things. That make it your business. The recruiting officer says that he seemed to know you.”

“Well, I don’t know him!” Aeryn snorted.

“Are you sure?” Mazko eyed her intently. “Because the infant with him... DNA analysis shows it is a match for both him as one parent.... and you as the other.”

“But that’s impossible!” Aeryn blurted out. “Check my medical records! I have never borne a child!”

“We have,” Hadak mumbled, clearly uneasy. She glared at him. “It’s inexplicable.”

“And I have never seen that man before yesterday in my life!” Aeryn harrumphed.

“So, we have a mystery,” Mazko rescued Hadak from Aeryn’s ire. “And Peacekeeper High Command do not like mysteries.”

“And, to go back to my opening point, he will not cooperate in providing answers,” Avanko explained.

“Look,” Mazko fixed Aeryn with a piercing stare. “We’re not accusing you of anything. But the guard who brought him in said he seemed to recognise you, so we thought, seeing as we can’t get anything out of him, you might have more luck?”

“What, you mean, pretend to be whoever he thinks I am?” Aeryn frowned, hoping that wasn’t actually what he meant.

“Exactly,” Mazko confirmed with a nod. Frell. That sounded like a lot of aggravation.

“If you can get his confidence, make him think you are... whoever he thinks you are?” Avanko ventured.

“And how am I supposed to do that?” Aeryn asked, angry at them for expecting her to be able to make this work. “We have no idea who he thinks I am.”

“You’re an experienced Special Ops operative, just…. Improvise? Isn’t that what you people do?”

“Fine!” Aeryn sighed. It wasn’t like she had anything better planned for the next few days, anyway. Her contact in the Kalish resistance against the Scarrans, who she had been on her way to meet when she had stopped off at the carrier, had sent a message last night saying she was going to be delayed by at least a weeken, maybe more. At least this Cretin was easy on the eye. It might even be a fun assignment.

@@@

“Ugh, time for a shower,” Aeryn grunted, waking to find herself still in Larraq’s arms, a wet feeling between her thighs. That and a limp cock. She pushed his arm away and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

She looked down at Larraq. Well, now she had frelled him there was no point trying to put the razlak back in the bottle. Just so long as John never found out…

Without bothering to cover her nudity, what would be the point, after all, she headed for the shower, not looking back even when she heard Larraq stir behind her. Time to wash away the residue of their recreation session.

For a big man, he moved like a bantha cat: he surprised her, catching up with her at the door to the sanitary annex.

“You can debrief me about your mission while showering, Lieutenant,” he teased as he followed her into the sanitary annex. She half turned at the sensation of Larraq’s hand on her hip as she stepped into the shower cubicle. He’d followed her in! Again!? The man was insatiable! What had he been taking!? His half-hard erection beating against her hip showed he was ready for another frell.

She turned on the water, the momentary shock of cold being replaced after a few microts by comfortable warmth.

Aeryn thought fast as he finished turning her to face him: she had already been fully frelled by him once, so there was no point in trying to reset a boundary that had already been crossed. He leant in and kissed her on the lips. For the sake of the mission, for the sake of finding and rescuing D’Argo and John, it made sense now not to hold back from adopting the role of Lieutenant Sun, Captain Larraq’s recreation partner. She kissed him back, deepening the kiss. She could feel her heartbeat racing. She resolved that she would frell him as much and in whatever manner was necessary to maintain her cover.

It was necessary. It was pragmatic. Holy dren his strong body felt good pressed against her.

She treated him to a lopsided grin as his hands raised to cup both her loomas. Her fingers curled round his cock as it bobbed between them – to her surprise and delight she found that he was already fully hard again! She felt flattered that she could inspire Larraq to such repeated heights of lust.

As he pinned her to the wall of the shower, she wrapped her arms round his shoulders, lifting her long legs to curl around his hips. The move allowed his cock to slide into place beneath her pussy. His hands cupped beneath her eema, half supporting her, half guiding their manoeuvre. His hips rocked, setting up a rhythm that her body found irresistible. She clenched her buttocks and arched her back, raising and lowering herself. She felt his tip dock and then he allowed gravity to do the rest.

He slid straight up into her sheaf, borne down onto him by her entire weight in less than three microts. Her clit was crushed between their pubic bones. Some relief came as he pushed her harder back against the cubicle wall, but then his powerful legs began to jackhammer his cock into her. Not that there was much of a stroke, the way they were positioned, but despite that, the depth of his penetration and the pressure on her clit was already driving her towards climax. His hand was back on her loomas now, adding to her sensory overload as it squeezed and twisted her nipple.

“Jo.... Janko!!!!” she screamed out her orgasm, remembering mid word to use the right name.

But Larraq wasn’t done. Letting her down onto her still-shaky legs he stepped back to give her space and turned her towards the wall. As she leant on the cold, wet surface to steady herself he spooned her from behind, his cock grinding against her between her legs, one hand grasping and squeezing her looma, the other tugging her hair, pulling her back into an arch. Aeryn risked lifting one hand away from the wall, sliding it down between her legs. Finding his tip wasn’t hard, it was slipping and sliding, pushing hard across her labia as it swept to and fro across her clit. Her skilled, long fingers pushed it up on its next backstroke, and when he drove in again, he drove hard. Her hand shot back to the shower wall to steady herself as he scored a direct hit on her G-spot.

She snarled in animalistic passion, sweat mixing with the drizzling shower, so like rain, as he hammered into her.

And as her second climax shuddered through her body, from the tips of her toes upwards, she felt him unleash his own outpouring of ejaculate deep into her very core.

As the shower swept away their sweat and any uncontained bodily fluids, Aeryn realised that that made twice Captain Larraq had come inside her this morning, and once more in her mouth the night before. And each time, Aeryn’s resistance to the idea of recreating with him had diminished even more. At this rate, she realised, all of her resistance to him would be gone within days.

Not that it seemed to matter anymore, she realised, as she felt him withdrawing from her.

@@@

“You never did say, why are you back early?” Janko probed as they settled at a secluded table in the Officer’s Lounge, breakfast trays on the table between them.

“Well, I never said, because every time the subject has come up you’ve then moved straight to recreation.” Aeryn flirted with a lopsided, twinkly eyed grin, nibbling suggestively on a long, phallic fruit. Larraq shrugged and grinned, acknowledging her point. “There was a development.” She supplied, thinking quickly, making up details as she went. It could be useful to get a full Captain behind her in her search for D’Argo and John, and this was the opportunity to do so. “Apparently some scientist and his offspring were taken by an enlistment squad…”

“So?” Larraq snorted, stirring his plate of protein supplement with one hand, lifting his hot beverage to his lips with the other.

“So....  Apparently, he worked in some sort of special Gammak project, to overcome heat delirium. Top secret stuff.”

“Gammak project? Oh frell, not another one,” Larraq groaned with genuine feeling. She understood entirely why. He was thinking of the intellent virus. “You couldn’t have let someone else take the mission, could you?”

“You know I couldn’t.” Aeryn shook her head earnestly. “Anyway. Back on topic, he had successfully modified his own genes to be immune to heat delirium. And passed them on to his child. But only he knows how, and then he absented himself. The people who have enlisted them have no idea who he is or how valuable. I have to find them and return them to his Gammak team.”

“Why doesn’t he just tell the recruiters who he is, that’s if he even has been recruited?”

“And risk some over enthusiastic grunt with no ability to grasp the big picture retire him for desertion? Would you?”

“I guess not.”

“That’s why they contacted Special Ops, in the form of me, to track them down and extract them.”

“So, where is he?”

“I don’t know. They’ve likely gone into the system. Like I said, this is all surmise and intel. That’s why I had to come back early, to access the main data net to see if I can find him. I ordered Records to search for him last night when I got back to the carrier.”

“And they’ll call you when they’ve got something?”

“That’s what I ordered.”

“Fine, then there’s nothing more you can do until then. So, finish your breakfast and we can go frell.”

“Again!?” Aeryn was genuinely surprised. “You’re insatiable!” Although as she hurried to eat up, she was already fantasising about what Larraq might have in mind next.

@@@

“Just one more mouthful?” John cajoled D’Argo, trying to get his son to finish his breakfast.

“Don’t like food cubes!” The youngster protested. “Want proper food!”

“I know, but it’s all we’ve got this morning,” John answered, struggling to remain calm and cheerful for the sake of D’Argo. He was surprised that the Peacekeepers had allowed them to stay together, and put them up in a ‘private’ cell. He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or worried by their unexpected and, in his experience, uncharacteristic, display of hospitality.

The sound of the door to John’s spartan cell sliding open shook him from his reverie. To his utter surprise Aeryn slipped through, looking furtive and dressed in a PK Special Ops uniform.

Was this the start of he and D’Argo’s escape?


	5. Five

Lieutenant Sun took a deep breath to prepare herself for the task ahead. She swiped open the door to the cell of the mysterious Jan Cretin and stepped inside.

The recruits were sitting at the small, plain table, where the older recruit was feeding the younger one second meal. They looked up, towards her, surprise, then delight etched on both of their faces.

“Mama!” the child, Dave, exclaimed, jumping down, reaching his arms up and toddling towards her, throwing his arms around her knees when he reached her. She stopped a few steps into the call and stood woodenly, eyes darting between the two males, her face a mess of controlled nervousness.

“Aeryn? So it was really you!” Cretin gasped, moving to embrace her, just behind his son. “How did you get aboard?” She could hear some strange language under the translator microbes. Did he expect her to be able to talk in that language? Frell. That was something they hadn’t considered.

“Shh!” she silenced him with a finger to his lips as, despite the presence of the child between them, Jan wrapped her in a bear hug. “There is no monitoring in the cell,” she whispered in his ear in Sebacean, hoping that wouldn’t raise his suspicions. “But we can’t risk being overheard from the corridor.”

He nodded in understanding and then, to her great surprise, placed one of his large hands on either side of her face and half pulled, half leant in to lock lips with her in a passionate kiss. Well, if that was what was expected of her in this role, she had best play along, she decided, returning his kiss with equal enthusiasm. Frell, he was a good kisser.

A really good kisser.

She was quite disappointed when he broke the kiss.

“If it weren’t for the sprout being awake...” he nodded down to indicate the child wrapped around her knee, then returned his gaze to lock eyes with hers and crooked an eyebrow and a smirk. Aeryn nodded, slowly and sincerely.  She instantly understood his meaning and somewhat agreed with the sentiment, be he half Interion or not. She found this male quite interesting, although the child and of course her duty prevented her from taking things further.

“Later, hopefully, when we get you out of here,” she intimated, trying to build his trust in her. She seemed to be getting away with the language thing for now, but she couldn’t risk staying long, and she would have to speak to Mazko about it.

“Which might be...?” Cretin asked.

“Maybe a day or two. To be fair, I was lucky to be able to pass for a crew member. Apparently, there’s another Aeryn who looks just like me...”

“Luck has nothing to do with it, babe. This reality is pretty close to ours, so there was always a good chance of there being a version of you here in the Peacekeepers.” Reality? Aeryn thought fast. Was he really implying he and the child were from a different reality, one where she and he were recreation partners and this was their offspring? It seemed he might be. Preposterous though it sounded, it would explain a lot.

“And where might the other you be in this...” she played along with the scenario. Maybe he was fahrbot? It was her job to try to find out. “Reality?”

“Who knows? All the way back down the wormhole, back in Kansas, maybe?” What did he mean by that? And what was this ‘Canvas’ he spoke of?

“Mama, I’m scared!” came a small voice from down below. Cretin immediately dropped to his knees to talk to the infant face to face. Aeryn simply stared, not knowing how to react. She had barely had any dealings with pre-pubescents since she herself had been one.

“Don’t worry,” Cretin’s soft voice and tender touches seemed to reassure the child. “It’s just a little game. Momma just has to get some things sorted out and we can get going, ‘kay? Till then you gotta stay here with me and play dumb if any of those big, bad Peacekeepers ask you anything.”

“What do you mean by that, Jan Cretin?” She asked, glowering, offended at his description of the Peacekeepers.

“Just playing along… and Cretin?” He grinned.

“It’s the name you gave the techs,” she explained, thinking fast.

“Well, I was hardly going to say ‘hi, I’m John Crichton’ was I?” Ah, so that was his real name. Maybe Mazko could find out something about him now? Although maybe not if he really was from down a wormhole in an alternate reality where this was his child with some other version of her?

Aeryn was totally discombobulated – alternate realities, wormholes, another Aeryn Sun who had had a child with this strange, emotional, not entirely Sebacean man... and not given that child up to the crèche? What the frell..?

“Be ready!” She hissed at the two males. “I’ll be back when I can, but I can’t stay too long!” She made as though to leave, but she hadn’t taken half a step when Crichton stood and wrapped her in a bear hug. The infant similarly clamped around her lower leg. After a few microts, Crichton backed off a dench or two, took her face between her hands once more and kissed her softly and slowly.

“You take care! You know you and D’Argo are the most precious things in my life!” Crichton told her in a soft croon as he reached up and softly stroked her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. She shivered, overcome with a wave of incomprehensible emotions.

Aeryn nodded, gulped, and all but fled the cell.

@@@

"Yes!” Aeryn snarled, unable to say anything more complicated. If Larraq had given it thought he would have realised that it was hard to breath and speak at the same time when you were bent almost double, ankles up above your ears. Harder still when a muscular, virile Peacekeeper Captain was on top of you, pounding you like he was trying to lay foundations for a planetside building. But if there was one lesson that her sex-addled brain could currently remember from her time as an assassin, it was that you needed to totally immerse yourself in any undercover role for the success of the mission.

Sweat glistened on his brow. His muscles rippled. His clenched teeth showed through thinly drawn lips. Aeryn clawed at his back and shoulders, one nail drawing a thin bead of blood. He didn’t seem to mind in the least. In fact, it spurred him on further. She became aware of a rhythmic banging sound above her. Oh yes, that would be her head hitting the headboard with each thrust. The realisation only served to amuse her.

“Yes!” Larraq snarled, also apparently unable to formulate anything more complicated to say. All his blood, all his thoughts were likely focussed on the matter at hands – he pushed her calves back further, seeming to revel in the way her clawing fingernails anchored him even more deeply in the animal savagery of their recreation.

Another few strokes and she could feel her breath quickening, her body convulsing, her climaxing...

Another few strokes and she could see his snarl deepening, his back arching, his cock bucking as his warm wetness filled her...

Together they screamed their releases.

Larraq hadn’t been entirely kidding earlier when he’d suggested assigning her to recreation duties. Well, there were worse ways to pass a day while waiting for news from the records office.

Aeryn grinned, rather pleased with how easily she had been able to slip into the role of Lieutenant Aeryn Sun. Indeed, she had experienced very little difficulty doing so. It was all rather gratifying.

@@@

“So how did it go?” Mazko asked Lieutenant Sun directly once she got back to the briefing room.

“About as well as we could have hoped,” Aeryn replied evenly. “He claims to be from a different reality, and in that reality I am his recreation partner, and the mother of the infant. Oh, and his real name is John Crichton.”

“A different reality? That’s ridiculous!” Hadak spluttered. Aeryn quirked an eyebrow that he didn’t comment on the other matters, the ones more personal to her.

“I don’t believe so,” Mazko shook his head. “Peacekeeper scientists have long speculated that...”

“Speculation that has never progressed beyond theories, as far as I know?” Aeryn interjected, audibly losing her patience. Then she added, in a more conciliatory tone: “So that means he is either insane, lying, or he really is from another reality and has knowledge which could prove valuable to us.”

“More likely one of the first two,” Avenco scoffed. “How did he get here, if he’s from another reality?”

“He mentioned wormholes,” Aeryn supplied. “Just the once, and in no detail.”

“Then why didn’t you stay to get more details?” Avenco asked with obvious irritation.

“He spoke to me in a language I did not recognise.” Aeryn shrugged, annoyed at Avenco’s attitude towards her.

“So? You have translator microbes.” Avenco persisted. Aeryn shot her a glare, daring her to say anything else. She lapsed into cowed silence.

“If we are in any way entertaining his explanation, it seems reasonable that he might expect me to know some words of his language,” Aeryn sighed. “I didn’t want to stay and risk him realising that I do not.”

“That would be a problem,” Mazko nodded, acknowledging her point. “It would blow your cover for sure.”

“We may be able to help with that,” Hadak, the med tech finally contributed. “As we have recordings of all of his speech, especially when alone with the infant, we can extract the segments in his language then put you in a deep, hypnotic, accelerated learning state. You won’t learn much, I admit, but a few words might be enough to gain his trust by your next meeting?”

Aeryn nodded. “It’s got to be worth a try.” She was up for trying it – it was her duty to try to make this a success, no matter whether she found Avenco annoying or Cretin oddly intriguing or not. And if she could gain his confidence with a few words then it might buy her time to learn a few more? And ultimately to solve the mysteries surrounding him.

“I’d be even more credible if it could be arranged for me to help him and the infant escape,” she suggested. She half dreaded spending more time with him, being unable to flee from his presence like she had earlier. But she was also excited by the idea, both with regards to successfully completing the mission and, although she hated to admit it to herself, being compelled to be with this interesting male who claimed that she was his recreation partner. “Then he might really open up to me?”

“What exactly are you suggesting?” Mazko frowned.

“Maybe get us a Marauder. With a trace, naturally.” She explained. “Then I can take him to where he wants... it was Enstor, wasn’t it, where he was picked up? And then, once I have his confidence, I can try to get him to show me whether this wormhole and alternative reality thing is true and how he does it?”

Avenko and Mazko both nodded keenly: “I’ll prep a Marauder and get an escape scenario set up for late tonight,” Mazko announced. “My people will be the only Peacekeepers between his cell and the hangar, to make sure it all goes smoothly.”

“Call me when you need me,” Aeryn nodded, standing. “I think I have an appointment with Hadak’s subliminal learning machine. The sooner I get started, the more of his language I’ll know by tonight.”

@@@

Aeryn stalked through the decks of the Command Carrier, trying to sort out her thoughts and emotions. She had never been on this carrier until a couple of days ago, but she knew the layout like the back of her hand.

She had finally managed to get away from Larraq, claiming she had duties to perform. In reality, of course, she had no such thing. She didn’t belong here. How could she have any duties? Except to John and D’Argo, of course.

She marched past the third Prowler bay on the hammond side, glancing inside but continuing on. She’d been gone for arns, she must have walked motras.

John would be horrified if he ever found out what she had got up to with Captain Larraq. She herself felt a strange mixture of emotions. She felt no personal guilt or regret over the sex, rather satisfaction and excitement that she was able to indulge her Peacekeeper sexuality away from John. But there was guilt that she had somehow betrayed John’s expectations of her. She turned left, heading down a deck along a ramp towards the engineering tech quarters. Yes, she felt guilt that her behaviour had been so at odds with what John would have wanted. It was important to him, so it was important to her. And yet... her upbringing had indoctrinated her to feel no guilt about sex. And the sex with Larraq had been good. It had been very good.

She turned right, skirting past the magazines for the Kkore cannons, taking care not to enter or even go near the ‘forbidden zone’, where the commandos standing guard were under standing orders to shoot any unauthorised intruders on sight.

She knew what she had to do. She had to focus on finding John and D’Argo. On getting back to them, with the transport pod intact. On getting them all back through the wormhole, either back to Moya or on to Erp.

The sex with Larraq was irrelevant. It didn’t matter. Not that it wasn’t pleasant, or that she intended to stop. Not that it wouldn’t matter to John, should he ever somehow find out about it. So, he could never find out about it.

She turned back towards the Special Ops Officers Quarters. She had been gone... it must have been a good few arns. She wondered what Larraq had been up to. Not very much, though: she didn’t really care. He wasn’t her husband, he wasn’t even her long term recreation partner and she didn’t love him.

But much like John enjoyed his movies and his football games, she did enjoy a good frell. And Captain Larraq was a very, very good frell.

She made a left turn to cut through planetary recreation deck. As she approached the statue by the lake, a group of half a dozen male cadets caught her eye. They were late teens and all of them were very handsome in the full flush of early adulthood. She guessed they were taking time off from their demanding training and assessment schedule. They were busy rough-housing, which gave her an opportunity to enjoy ogling them slightly, slowing her pace to do so – they looked gorgeous.

 Suddenly one of them looked her way, smiled and caught her eye.

“Lieutenant Sun!” he called her by name, smiling at her, stopping his playful wrestling with one of the others. “I thought you were off carrier?” She smiled back and stepped closer to their group, who by now had all stopped wrestling and were looking her way like a group of puppies might look at their owner.

“Unexpected development,” she explained enigmatically. They obviously knew her.  Time to play for time while she worked out more. “I’m back for a few days. How are you all?” she asked vaguely, realising that her alter ego knew these boys for some reason, and so she ought to behave as though she did too.

“Just relaxing, ma’am. We’ve got our final Prowler combat assessment tomorrow afternoon,” another of the boys explained, staring at her with hungry eyes. She smiled the indulgent smile of an older woman who knew she was the subject of their adolescent sexual fantasies back at him.

“We’d all like to thank you for coaching us so well!” So that was it? She was their Prowler combat tutor? That made sense. Six of them – there were six pilots in a Prowler training wing. That was when she noticed the insignia on some of their kit: Zeeta flight, yes a Prowler training wing.

“Well, I expect you will all pass with flying colours!” she encouraged. “Do be sure to let me know how you all do?”

“We’ve booked a private mess room from sixth arn tomorrow night. To celebrate!” Another put in. It wasn’t unusual – the final combat assessment was a major milestone – you either passed or died, and if you passed, you were no longer a cadet but a junior flight officer. “Deck lang, kappa twelve,” he gave the location. Obviously, he was hoping she’d come along, or why else tell her?

“Altar’s hoping you’ll come along and recreate with him, once he’s a proper pilot,” the boy who’d first caught her eye teased, ruffling the hair of the speaker who’d effectively invited her to their private party. Altar blushed furiously, cutely, betraying to her that he had indeed hoped for that.

Aeryn laughed. She was pretty sure from the drooling looks of boyish devotion they were all sending her, pretty much the whole training wing felt the same way. It was flattering. And completely normal in Peacekeeper ranks to be propositioned so openly.

It was also normal to turn someone down, with no offence taken.

“We’ll see, maybe if you get good marks,” she winked at Altar, who turned beetroot red. A couple of the other boys jostled him, laughing and ruffling his hair. “Maybe if you get good marks I’ll come along and buy you a drink,” she laughed openly, rubbing the bottom of her lip with her tongue, enjoying the harmless, flirting banter. There was no way she would consider doing more than sharing a drink with them, after all. Sex with Larraq was unavoidable to maintain her cover, but she wasn’t Chiana! She wasn’t going to recreate with any of them.

“Teachers pet, you'll ace it!” one of the other boys encouraged Altar, who grinned.

“You’ll all do well, I’m sure,” she encouraged, still slightly enjoying the attention but growing more serious. “And to make sure you do, I’m going to try to book a final tutorial session with you in the combat sims tomorrow morning – I'll ping you a message about where and when, when I’ve got it sorted out.” It would be heart breaking to think of any of these gorgeous young men, on the cusp of adulthood, dying in their final assessment, especially if she could maybe help prevent it with a final bit of tutoring. The grins and adoring looks that greeted her announcement told her that her offer had been well received, as she would have expected it to have been.

“Right, well, I’d better get going and get that training booked in then,” she grinned back at them. She would actually have loved to stay and enjoy the camaraderie a while longer, but was feeling the need to pee after her long walk - all the sex with Larraq had done things to her bladder. There was a communal sanitary room at the other side of the park – she'd head there before getting a bite to eat and heading back to quarters. “Hope to see you all tomorrow at the flight sims!” she waved, turning away to leave.

“And at the party: Deck lang, kappa twelve! From sixth arn!” Altar called after her hopefully as she took her first couple of steps.

“Maybe, but don’t wait for me!” she snorted dismissively, as she waved them goodbye and good luck.

@@@

John finished feeding D’Argo his third meal and settled back to think. It seemed odd that the Peacekeepers had kept him and D’Argo together and in a private cell and had not processed them any further after the medical. Maybe they were busy with other recruits? Maybe they were confused by what they’d discovered from the medical and were trying to find a Standard Operating Procedure for what to do next? Maybe Aeryn had managed to subtly intervene on their behalves? And where the frell was she anyway? He’d feel a lot better if she...

The door swooshed open and Aeryn furtively slipped through, as though, Beetlejuice like, he had summoned her with his thoughts. He moved swiftly to stand and envelope her in a hug, which she reciprocated stiffly for a microt before pushing herself away.

“I’ve disabled the monitoring devices in this corridor,” she told him quietly and earnestly, with some urgency. “Let’s go. But we have to move quickly and quietly.”

“Whatever you say babe, it’s your plan!” John answered, trusting her implicitly.

“Follow me!”  She ordered. “And keep quiet. Best if you carry the... D’Argo.” She added, somewhat strangely, to John’s ear, but hey, it was a breakout, she was under a lot of stress.

John marvelled at her ability to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the vast carrier. It was late, and few people were about, but even so, John guessed from the narrowness of the corridors that she was sticking to minor, little used passages. Apart from the salutes to Aeryn, the Officer in Uniform, and the odd person apologising as they stepped out of her path, nobody paid any heed to their passing.

“Where we going, babe?” John hissed as they made their way down an empty corridor.

“I’ve a Marauder prepped in landing bay three,” she replied, not breaking step.

“What about the pod? We need the pod.”

“I... umm, had to leave it back on... Enstor.” Well, that made some sense to John. If she was infiltrating a PK ship, a Leviathan transport pod would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

They turned another corner, Aeryn swiped her ident chip over the controls to a double door and they stepped through. Ahead of them, to either side, were ranks of Marauders, maybe twenty in all. A handful of techs hurried about, tending the ships with equipment large and small. None of them paid the Lieutenant and her two companions any heed.

“That one is ours,” Aeryn indicated the third Marauder on the left as she began to march directly towards it. John, carrying D’Argo, followed in her wake, trying as best he could to look like he belonged here half as much as Aeryn did.

@@@

Aeryn had to hand it to Mazko, he had been as good as his word in ensuring her fake escape would go smoothly. They reached the rear hatch to the Marauder and Crichton reached out and pulled her to a halt, turning her back to face him.

“I love you, Aeryn Sun,” he confided in a low whisper in his own language. His eyes seemed to be searching her face for something. His lips were set in neither a smile or a frown. Aeryn guessed this was a test of some sort – that he was trying to find out if she was his Aeryn Sun or not. Only she would be able to reply in his language. Thank Cholak for Hadak and his learning programme.

“I love you too... John Cretin,” she ventured with a hopeful smile, trying out her English. It seemed to work as he nodded, returned her smile, released his grip on her elbow and pointed inside the Marauder.

“Then let’s get this show on the road,” he grinned.

A macrot later and they were on the small, crowded flight deck of the Marauder, Aeryn, still all business like PK efficiency, sat in the pilot’s seat and swung it round into the flight position, picking up and donning the oculars as she went. “Strap both of you in, in case it gets difficult,” she ordered him then tapped the side of the oculars.

“Lieutenant Aeryn Sun, Special Ops, requesting clearance to depart docking bay three,” she intoned as her fingers danced across the controls, bringing systems on line.

“Granted!” came a tiny voice through some hidden speaker.

“That was easy!” John evidently couldn’t believe their luck. Well, luck had nothing to do with it.

“Special Ops. They wouldn’t dare hold me up once they’d checked my ID.” She explained as an overhead crane began to carry the Marauder towards the main airlock doors and ‘escape’.

@@@

“Captain… Draznot, isn’t it?” Aeryn asked from the doorway of the small office, addressing the somewhat reptilian looking male occupant. “Intelligence and Disruptor division liaison?”

The records office still hadn’t come up with any information on John and D’Argo and, as her fitful wanderings had taken her past this office, she had realised that maybe the intel and spying people might be able to provide her with something. Once she’d had the thought, she couldn’t just pass up the possibility.

Draznot nodded, cold, unreadable gaze latching on to her with disconcerting intensity. He was about her age, but she felt no affinity with him at all. “Come in, take a seat.” He replied, motioning to the chair on the far side of his desk. “What can I do for you today, Lieutenant Sun?” Aeryn suppressed a shiver at the realisation that he clearly knew who she was. Did the real Lieutenant Sun know him? It was possible, and it certainly complicated matters. However, if anyone could find John and D’Argo it was Draznot’s directorate.

Trying to look calm and nonchalant she sat in the indicated seat. “I wondered if you might be able to do some research for me? I’m looking for…”

“A favour?” He steepled his fingers and peered across the tips. She nodded. “You want a favour? Do I take that to mean that you have reconsidered your position regarding my proposal?” Frell, Aeryn cursed inwardly. His predatory smile made her blood run cold. From the expression on his face and the tone of his voice she already had her suspicions as to what sort of ‘favour’ he had in mind.

“Refresh my memory,” she glared back, voice and visage cold, but not so cold as to completely discourage him, just in case he was after a little piloting tutelage or something equally innocuous. He stood slowly and strolled around towards her, never taking his eyes off her once. She forced herself to sit still and wait for him to lay out his position. Well, at least this way Draznot would hopefully  have played his hand before she had potentially exposed John and D’Argo to him as potential leverage.

She ground her teeth in an attempt to remain calm as he moved closely behind her. His hands dropped onto her shoulders. They began to stroke across shoulders and upper arms, reinforcing her suspicions that the price for his help would be too high.

“You know what I want, Aeryn,” he smirked from behind her, fingers slipping into her hair, onto her neck. “You,” he added, just to make his position abundantly clear. She felt only revulsion.

“That’s not going to happen, Draznot,” she stated flatly. “You’re not my type.” And it was absolutely the truth.

“You should reconsider,” he continued to rub her neck, fingers now circling in a loose but threatening hold, apparently not the least discouraged by her rejection and perhaps attempting to intimidate her. “After all, as things stand someone… someone… without your best interests at heart could make a very compelling case that you and Captain Larraq are… guilty of a compromising emotional attachment. Another recreation partner…” He started to tighten his fingers around her neck in an obvious power play.

“Oh, I have other recreation partners,” Aeryn lied.

“That will change when...” his fingers began to tighten. Aeryn had had enough, unable to take any more of his words or his uninvited touch. Why should she? Draznot had made his price and position clear and there was no way she would expose John and D’Argo to him. She moved, intending to stand and break his grip, but his grip tightened more, making breathing a struggle as he tried to hold her in place with all his strength and weight. “You are mine...” he hissed. This was intolerable.

She moved swiftly, chopping at his hands, breaking his grip, standing, turning and stepping away from him. “I’ve plenty of recreation partners. But you’ll never be one of them.” She angrily snapped.

“Really?” He snorted disdainfully. Aeryn kept him at bay with an icy glare. She didn’t reckon he was any match for her in a fight, but she still assessed the best route to the door.

“Really.” She snarled back, angry now, talking without thinking. “I’m planning on adding one of my trainees to my list once he graduates. So should anyone choose to make such a baseless accusation…”

“Aeryn….” Draznot almost whined now, defeated, as she headed for the door. It was clearly pointless staying any longer. “Why him and not me!?”

“Because…. I like him,” she snarled back, totally truthfully, before stomping from the room.

@@@

Aeryn polished off her third meal with gusto and some satisfaction, Draznot all but forgotten, or at least, the foul mood he had induced all but forgotten: The flight sims were booked between eighth and eleventh arn, messages had been sent to Zeeta flight, her bladder had long since been emptied... twice, and now her hunger satisfied. As Aeryn left the mess hall, she was half surprised to bump into Larraq. Of course, their quarters were only a minute’s walk away, and he was holding a small box of snacks, which presumably he’d have just got from the dispenser outside the mess, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising.

“Hi, Aeryn!” he greeted her with a raffish smile.

“Oh! Where have you been?” she asked as they fell into step, walking towards their quarters.

“Well, earlier I was checking out your new toy. A Leviathan transport pod?” He laughed.

“It seemed like a good idea to not look so obviously like a Peacekeeper when I was over on the Scarran border,” she replied, thinking fast.

“Fine. I like your thinking. Although maybe the beaten up Privateer Marauder would be quicker and safer?” He was right, it would.

“Maybe. Maybe next time?” She conceded, not wishing to give even a hint that there were other reasons she had arrived in the pod. They walked in silence for a few microts.

“I saw you with your fan club earlier.” Larraq remarked.

“Huh?” she frowned, genuinely confused by his reference.

“Training flight Zeeta? On the planetary reconstruction deck?”

“Oh yes!” she answered as they fell into step again. “They have their final combat assessment later. Tomorrow afternoon. I was wishing them good luck. Actually, I’ve booked in to do some final coaching for them tomorrow morning.”

“Nice. Those boys adore you – as well they might – their interim assessments are outstanding, mostly down to you.”

“They do the flying, I just teach them a few tricks,” Aeryn demurred as they reached the door to their quarters.

“The way they drool over you, I reckon they wish you would,” Larraq grinned lasciviously and swiped the door open.

 Aeryn snorted in faux-outrage and batted his arm playfully before stepping inside.

“They’ve asked me to their party in the evening,” she told him. She remembered her own graduation party – her, Henta, three guys. As was not unknown for such Peacekeeper celebrations, high spirits and excessive Razlak consumption had led to group sex. The males had wanted to recreate with both of the females, whilst Henta had only wanted to recreate with her. It had been the most awkward orgy she’d ever known. Thank Cholak she would never have to experience anything like that again.

“You should go, otherwise it’ll be a pretty dull party, six guys!” Larraq laughed, his words reminding her of her taunt to Draznot. “And it’ll give me a much needed chance to rehydrate!” he smirked. She rolled her eyes, unable to tell how serious he was being, and about what detail – the party or him needing a rest from the near-constant sex. Not that she herself would object to an evening’s respite.

“I’m sure they’ve all asked their recreation partners,” she stated. She was pretty sure they had. Handsome high flyers like them wouldn’t be short of willing partners.

“I’ve got you some new uniforms, lieutenant,” Larraq announced from behind her as they entered their quarters, the door swishing shut behind him. A pile of uniform bags from the stores were neatly arranged along the foot of the bed. Aeryn strolled over to the bed and picked up the first bag. “I saw you had a bag of new clothes in the transport pod, and I liked your choices.” Frell, those bags had contained some tralky clothes to titillate John! “My standing orders are that these should now be regarded as an essential part of your non-combat uniform and are also to be worn whenever we are alone in our quarters.”

Aeryn tipped the first bag onto the bed. It was a tralk outfit! Matching black bra, minimalist underwear and what John would call a garter belt, along with the tight black leg coverings called stockings!

“You fekkik!” she snorted with disdain, turning her head towards him. “You think I’m going to dress up like a tralk for your amusement?”

“Orders are orders, Lieutenant,” he inclined his head as though this wasn’t his idea at all, but something unfortunate he was compelled to ask of her as her commanding officer. “And if not for my amusement, what about your brave Zeeta boys?”

“Pfft! In your dreams. And theirs.” she dismissed him. “I’m going for a shower. And don’t you dare follow me!” She warned him as she turned and stepped towards the sanitary annex. As she movedto shut the door, she turned, fixed him with a half scowl, half smirk. “While I’m in there, make yourself useful. Take this lot and... pick out what you want me to put on when I get back.” she finished with a wink as she slammed the door.


	6. Six

“The sprout’s settled,” John informed Aeryn as he entered the flight deck to find her still busy at the controls. Aeryn was nervous – she would have to start interacting with him in earnest now, and the success of the mission hung on how much he believed she was the real Aeryn and felt able to confide in him.

“Sprout? Oh yes, fine,” Aeryn replied, trying to hide her momentary confusion at his strange use of language by appearing to be still intent on the controls. John’s hands settled on her shoulders and began to rub. It felt rather pleasant.

What the frell was he... Oh that felt good!

“You seem stressed babe. You want me to take a turn while you try and relax, maybe get some sleep?”

Aeryn was totally blindsided. The last thing she had expected was for him to be concerned over her welfare. The concern of others was not something she was accustomed to receiving.

“No, it’s fine, I was just setting up the automated systems. We seem to have gotten away, but before we go to bed I wanted to make sure we’ll get alerted... just in case,” she tried to concentrate on her words and her work, but it was hard with his hands doing what they were doing.

“Of course. So, when do you reckon we’ll make it to Enstor?”

“Before second meal tomorrow?” Oh Cholak his hands felt so good on her shoulders! “There, all done!” She announced, feeling inordinately proud of herself.

She was just about to stand when she realised his hands had moved from her shoulders to the tie holding her hair in a loose braid. What the frell was he...? He was unbraiding her hair! Strong yet gentle fingers combed through her hair, gently settling it out into a mantle across her shoulders, stroking her scalp. A soft kiss landed on the crown of her head. She felt overwhelmed. This wasn’t what she’d expected, not at all.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed, you look done in,” he announced. She nodded, turned the pilot’s chair out of its niche and stood.

“What are you doing, Crichton!” She demanded with a startled and nervous laugh as he lifted her into the crooks of his arms. He grinned back at her but offered no explanation for his actions. She decided that he would be expecting her to go along with this, so she elected to do so.

“Mind your head as we go, sunshine,” he chuckled as he carefully carried her off the flight deck and to the captain’s cabin, first on the left down the corridor. Once there he playfully dropped her on the bed.

“You just lie there and let me do all the work, it’s the least I can do,” he instructed her. Curious, intrigued and more than a little turned on, she propped herself up on her elbows and watched him attentively as he knelt at her feet and began to unbuckle her left boot.

“So, did you get the parts for the transport pod?” he asked as he eased the boot apart.

“Oh, umm, yes,” she answered, unsure what to say. Maybe if she was a little vague then she might get some intel out of him? “Although we still might need to do a little work?” she indicated as he tugged her boot off and moved onto the buckles of the other one.

“Well, so long as we don’t meet another PK rent-a-mob and can get back to the wormhole toot suite without any more complications, I’m good.” What the frell was he talking about? Maybe it would make more sense when he’d said some more.

“Absolutely,” she nodded in faux agreement. “And then what?” She prompted when he seemed too intent on massaging her now bootless feet and peeling off her socks to volunteer more information.

“Well, we’ve come this far. I’m still on for Plan A,” he smiled up at her with impossibly blue eyes. Her insides felt like they were melting. “Dad and Livvy and the rest are going to be so chuffed to see you again. And when they learn about D’Argo, well...  they’ll be cock a hoop.”

“You say the strangest things, John Crichton,” she frowned at him, not understanding half of what he was saying, but fascinated none the less.

He grinned up at her, winked and rubbed his bottom lip. “And that’s why ya love me.” He smirked, gently slapping her thigh. Love? Why did he use that word? It was taboo! “Come on babe, dentic, waste funnel and bed for you, I think. I sorted myself out before coming to the flight deck.” He held out his hand towards her and she took it.

To her surprise he pulled her to her feet and she found herself toe to toe, nose to chin with him. She could feel his breath on her face, but that wasn’t as distracting as his blue eyes locked on hers. He leant in and kissed her softly on the forehead. “Have I told you today how much I love you, Mrs Crichton.” Her breath caught. And there was that word again! What was he doing to her? Oh, he was turning her towards the sanitary antechamber and...

“Dentic!” he pulled a grimace, implying her breath was unpleasant. How dare he..!?

“HUH!?” Aeryn exclaimed, wide eyed, as Crichton slapped her eema, encouraging her towards the door with a grin.

@@@

Larraq reclined on the bed, naked, watching Aeryn with what John would term a dren eating grin as she propped up her foot and smooth the first stocking on. She arched an eyebrow at him as she swapped legs. Next she secured the belt around her waist, the four straps dangling down across eema and thighs. With each item she put on she, paradoxically, felt slightly more naked. That, and the look on Larraq’s face and the growth of size and firmness of his cock made it all worthwhile.

“What are you staring at?” She snorted.

“The woman I’m going to be frelling later,” he riposted with a smirk. A shiver of illicit excitement ran up and down Aeryn’s spine at his words. She shouldn’t be doing this, well, not with Larraq. But… it was necessary for the mission. And it wasn’t real. Well, it wasn’t her reality, anyway. So it sort of didn’t count.

“Make yourself useful, get over here and secure these fastenings,” she snorted, trying to appear aloof and unphased by his words, attention and intentions. As she lifted the bra and started to work out how to put it on, he scooted across the bed. With a totally superfluous amount of checking that her stockings and belt were positioned just right, he began to comply. The feeling as his fingers teased around the tops of her legs, securing the stockings, was thrilling. Not that she was going to tell him that. She settled the bra in place and glowered down at him.

“Haven’t you finished yet?” she scolded.

“They’re complicated! And unfamiliar!” He protested with a pout.

“You’re right there!” The whole get up was preposterous, but it served an interesting and entertaining function, she had to admit.

“Last one.... there!” he announced smoothing the suspender strap across her eema in a totally unnecessary caress.

“Fine!” she declared, placing her hand on his forehead and pushing him back onto the bed, away from her. He playfully tumbled back, clearly enjoying the view. She snorted, picked up the tiny, flimsy underwear, oriented it and leant forward to slip it over her ankles.

“Right, is this what you wanted?” she straightened and stood, legs akimbo, hands on her hips, staring at him. “Because if the plan was to frell I can’t see the point in getting dressed beforehand!” She protested with faux indignation and ignorance, knowing full well that the purpose of her outfit was to add eroticism to the basic physical act.

“I reckon your Zeeta flight boys’ heads would explode if they saw you looking like that!” Larraq teased, not for the first time. She began to wonder if he was being serious. “That’s if their trousers didn’t first!”

“Such a charmer,” she snorted, although she was preening at the thought. They had been very handsome and attentive young men. And they had made no bones about wanting to recreate with her. The emotions she shared with John were beyond comparison. But the sex she’d had as a Peacekeeper was... well, sometimes pretty rubbish, often pretty rubbish, really, but when it was good, it was beyond comparison. It was flattering to think that they wanted her. But nothing more than that. Recreating with Larraq was more than enough infidelity for one monen.

As she posed, hands on her waist, swinging her hips to and fro, Larraq reached up, snagged her crooked elbow, and pulled her down onto the bed beside him. Neither of them wasted any time in locking lips and canoodling. To Aeryn’s surprise she soon realised that that seemed to be all they were up to. Not that they were being chaste: Larraq seemed to have hands everywhere, and certainly more than just his assigned pair. But neither hand seemed keen to move on to the main event and, despite his obvious erection, her underwear presented something of a barrier to taking things further. Maybe that was the intention? Not that Aeryn was complaining: John was an expert at such prolonged ‘foreplay’ as he called it, and she had grown to appreciate it herself over the cycles, but it was most unexpected coming from a Peacekeeper like Larraq.

After what she took to be a good few macrots of nothing but kissing and groping, Aeryn’s frustration was growing intolerable, her patience close to snapping. Deciding to take the initiative, she rolled Larraq onto his back and angled herself perpendicular to him, showing the back of her head to his face, torso draped across his waist. From that angle she was able to launch an assault on his cock, leading with her hands but soon bringing her mouth into play, too. As she licked his top for the first time she was gratified to feel his hand inveigle its way between the tops of her thighs. She grunted in approval as it began to stroke her through her underwear. She rewarded him by combining a stroke of his cock with a thorough licking of his tip. She groaned in approval as his fingers slipped beneath her underwear, edging it down before making themselves useful in ways to match what her mouth was doing for him.

Once a satisfactory state of arousal had been achieved, Aeryn spun through 270 degrees to face him, swinging her legs over his hips and settling astride him, pinning his cock between them.

“So, does your new uniform meet your approval?” he smirked up at her, hands peeling the cups off her loomas and then kneading them hard.

“It’s thoroughly impractical. I can’t see the point!” In truth Aeryn felt deliciously decadent and desirable. She loved the feel of his hand as it dropped from her looma and stroked her thigh through the smooth, gossamer fabric of the stocking. But she was not going to tell him that. She snorted dismissively, pushed her hips aloft, reached between them and, guiding his cock into place, lowered herself back down, his entire length sliding slickly into her sheath until he was balls deep – she could feel them pushing up against her buttocks. Hands splayed on his muscular chest, she set up a rocking motion, while Larraq just lay there, content for once for her to do all the work. All he did was reach round to unhitch her already half removed bra, then split his hands attentions between thigh and loomas.

As she rode him, she noted that Larraq seemed increasingly fascinated by her loomas. That suited her fine. She closed her eyes, bit her lip, tossed her hair and surrendered to the many, many moments until at last she felt Larraq erupt into her like an exploding supernova. She ground and rocked down hard onto him for one last climax of her own then rolled off onto her back, feeling suddenly quite sleepy in a post-coital glow.

@@@

Lieutenant Sun returned to the sleeping chamber a few hundred microts later to be greeted by the sight of John Crichton dressed only in a pair of white undershorts. He looked gorgeous – a bit different to Larraq, but familiarity had been starting to breed boredom with her long term recreation partner. Crichton, on the other hand, was something new...

“Are you just gonna stand there staring or are you gonna lose the leather pants?” Crichton teased, shaking her from her lascivious train of thought. Trying to act nonchalant, she unbuckled her trousers and pushed them down, folding them and placing them carefully and neatly on the storage shelf closest to her. They were supposed to be regular recreation partners, after all, it wouldn’t do to seem too keen. As she did so, she watched, fascinated, as Crichton pushed down his white shorts. His cock was....  well, at least that organ looked normal for a Sebacean, even if the med tech had said his interior organs were more reminiscent of an Interion. Not that she had any idea what an Interion looked like. It was a good cock, too, a generous length and girth, even in its current flaccid state. She wondered what it would be like when erect. Well, she expected she’d find out soon. He clearly thought of her as his recreation partner, and she had to admit, she would just be doing her duty as an undercover operative if she frelled him. The prospect was quite… invigorating.

She found him... interesting. Fascinating, in fact, if she was honest.

Crichton half turned away from her to slip under the sheets, and she took that opportunity to swiftly shed her own regulation issue thick black underwear and vest. By the time he was settled, she was naked and sliding under the sheet alongside him.

She turned to face him, about to pounce on him, when he blindsided her yet again. His upper arm curled round her back, burying itself in her hair and softly stroking her cheek and the back of her head. The other, equally softly, cupped her lower looma. His nose rubbed side to side across hers. She reciprocated by running her hand across his well-muscled body, exploring, mapping it out by touch for the first time. He felt different to Larraq, but not better or worse. However, the difference was, in and off itself, rather exciting. The biggest difference between him and all the Sebaceans she had been with was his body heat. Here, under the covers, naked skin to naked skin, his higher body temperature was unavoidable, unarguable. Not so hot as to be uncomfortable, but it added an unexpected frisson to proceedings, a constant sensory underscore to the other sensations assailing her.

“Thank you, Aeryn,” he said in a husky whisper, his words punctuated by short, feathery kisses.

“What for?” she replied, distracted somewhat by the feel of his hardening cock pressing against her belly.

“Everything. Today, for rescuing D’Argo and me, and for being the most beautiful woman in the Universe.”

That did it. She claimed his lips in a passionate kiss, partly to silence his strange blathering, but partly because those strange blatherings, combined with the soft, caring attention and caresses he had been lavishing on her were driving her to distraction. Meanwhile her hand seized and clasped his firm eema in an equally passionate grip, pulling his hips tightly against hers.

“Wow, what’s got into you tonight?” He chuckled when she allowed him breathing space.

“You, now!” She retorted hopefully and directly.

“Patience,” he laughed. She suppressed a silent scream of frustration.

He was so gentle and unhurried, certainly compared to Larraq, Velorek or any of her other Peacekeeper recreation partners. He eased her onto her back and then disappeared, sliding down under the darkness of the sheets. He found then latched on to her looma and teased the nipple between his teeth and lips below and his tongue above. She buried her fingers in his short hair, warm and so like fur. Strong, gentle hands lavished attention on her loomas, her abdomen, her thigh, slipping inwards. She eased her legs apart to allow his fingers access, which they took advantage of. What she hadn’t anticipated was that shortly after that his mouth left her looma and trailed its way down... until he settled fully between her legs, head up towards hers, but face down.... what was he…? Why wasn’t he frelling her already!?

It started with his nose, nudging her, but was very soon followed with lips and tongue, kissing, parting, laving strange patterns...  As one hand kneaded her eema and the other caressed and tweaked her nipple, his tongue dived deep.

Aeryn inhaled sharply. How long was his tongue? Was he some sort of lizard? She didn’t care, it felt divine. She could hear the long, low, growl coming from her own throat, sensed the slow rocking of her own hips as the frelled his face back, smelled the heady fragrance of sex wafting up from beneath the sheet.

She bunched the sheets in her fists, gritted her teeth and snarled out her climax. Maybe she would forgive him for not frelling her. Just so long as he moved on to it soon!

He was laughing softly as he kissed his way back up her. Soon his body covered her, his hardness nestling at her soaked, parted entrance. He kissed her passionately, and she could taste her own juices, the flavour mixing with his musky, animal fragrance. She kissed him back hard, telling herself that she was doing so only out of her duty to the mission.

He rocked his hips and she felt his bulbous firmness slip smoothly but tightly inside her. She sighed with pleasure. He pushed deeper, her walls yielding to him as, dench after dench, he staked out his claim on and in her.  Huge, strong hands gently but firmly pinned her wrists to the bed above her head, lost in the mantel of her hair as he set up a slow, steady rhythm. He varied the angle every few strokes all the way from vertical, so his shaft ground against her clit, to nearly from below, so he had the same impact on her G-spot. She mewled. He suckled on her looma. She squeezed her walls tight around him and he opened himself up into her. He was hot, so hot she could feel it. She shuddered and bit down on his shoulder as she matched his climax with her own.

He rolled off her and pulled her into a spoon, face buried in her long, loose raven hair. “I love you, Aeryn Sun,” he whispered into her ear in his own language. Lieutenant Aeryn Sun was quite speechless. So she did what she could do – she smiled, growled and snuggled back against his muscular heat.

So far her undercover assignment was going really rather well.

@@@

Aeryn awoke and went to move, only to find she couldn’t move her arms.... or her legs. Her eyes shot open. She was in her quarters on the carrier, dressed still in some of her new ‘uniform’, notably the stockings and suspender belt, tied spread-eagled to the bed. Larraq sat naked at the data console, reading something. At the sound of her moving, Larraq stood and strolled over towards the bed. She caught sight of the clock, which said ninth arn. She was surprised it was so early.

“Well this is kinky, but what if I need to use the waste funnel?” She quipped with a grin as Larraq sat beside her, staring at her intently as he did so. She shivered as she noticed him place his commando knife on the sheet just below her left elbow.

“Who are you really, Aeryn?” he asked her, his tone serious but soft and not overly aggressive.

“What! I’m Aeryn, Lieutenant Aeryn Sun, Black Ghosts, assigned to Captain...” She protested, putting on an affronted mask.

“My Aeryn always refused to wear your outfit after the undercover mission when she acquired it, well, this one and a number of similar ones. Said they made her look like a tralk.” He arched an eyebrow.

“So? I changed my mind,” she shrugged. “Maybe I fancy looking like a tralk sometimes, you idiot?” Larraq shook his head and reached a hand out to stroke her chest, just between and below her loomas.

“Unlikely. But that’s not all. How did you get this... scar? Looks like an old one...” he arched an eyebrow. Aeryn shivered, both from the tickle of his touch and from being confronted. There was no getting out of this one. Larraq was an intelligent man, a thinker. That and, being tied to the bed, she hardly held the upper hand. The truth was perhaps the best strategy. Or at least the partial truth.

“You gave it to me,” She confessed.

“I would have remembered,” he snorted and shook his head again.

“Well, the you in the alternate Universe I am from did. Or the intellent virus did. Six cycles ago, during the mission to capture the intellent virus.”

“Whoa, hold up. Alternate Universe?” He seemed sceptical. Shocked even, as well he might. She had just sent him a huge curveball.

“Yes. Alternate me, alternate you, alternate Universe,” she sighed, hoping he would get over his surprise and catch on.

“Uhu?” He still seemed sceptical, but not unpleasantly so. “Soooo…. Just supposing for a moment that is true, how did that mission pan out in your story, sorry, Universe?”

“Well, sadly we never got around to recreating. Short story: The virus got you. You stabbed me. The man I’m looking for killed you and I’ve been with him most of ever since.” He neither nodded nor frowned. She decided to slip in a conciliatory bit of information. “So recreating with you hasn’t all been deception – I’ve been making up for a lost opportunity.”

He laughed at that, shaking his head in obvious good humoured amusement. Aeryn felt slightly more at ease as a result, despite still being tied up, her cover blown and under interrogation.

“So who is he? The guy who killed me?” Time for a bit of truth-bending she decided.

“A pilot-tech, a wormhole expert. Pretty much everything I told you about him is true. We came here a few days ago through a wormhole in the Leviathan transport pod – you can’t use PK vessels to travel wormholes, the occupants get liquefied. Our pod got damaged in transit. We were looking for parts to repair the pod when he got recruited, along with our offspring.”

“That’s just about pathetic and ridiculous enough to be true...” Larraq scoffed.

“That’s because it is true...” Aeryn harrumphed.

“And the other Lieutenant Sun?” He asked pointedly. “Is she still on her mission? Or dead? Did you kill her? Where is she?”

Aeryn shrugged as best she could with her arms tied spreadeagled and pulled a face. “No idea. My best guess is she’s still on whatever mission she was on. I came here because it was the first PK vessel I found after my mate and son went missing. Me bumping into you was just rotten luck. Or maybe good luck. That’s yet to be seen.”

“And the sex?” He arched an eyebrow and quirked a grin at her.

“It’s been absolutely fantastic,” she grinned back. “I mean, I was trying to avoid recreating with you at first because of the other man, he gets insanely jealous, but Cholak, Janko, you’re a good frell.”

“Hmm, you know, as bizarre as your story sounds, I think I.... believe you,” his finger pointedly stroked her old scar. She breathed a sigh, partly of relief, partly a reaction to his feathery touch on her sensitive skin. “Although, that said, I still don’t see why I should get involved.”

“Because this reality or that, I’m a Peacekeeper Officer, you’re a Peacekeeper Officer,” she lied proficiently. “And by helping me you would be serving the Peacekeepers in my Universe. We need his expertise. To hold back the Scarrans.” She paused, waiting for his response.

“Hmm,” he raised both his eyebrows and pulled a tight lipped expression which Aeryn could not  read.

“So, what are you going to do?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer.

“Well... I think I’m going to cut you lose, then I’m going to help you.” He moved towards the sash tying her left wrist with his commando knife. “Just as long as you keep wearing those outfits and draining my balls while you’re here,” he winked at her. She wasn’t sure if he was joking or not about that last bit.

She bit her lip and nodded slowly. “I promise.” It wouldn’t hurt to play along if he was joking. And if he wasn’t, well, she needed his cooperation and discretion – she couldn’t risk alienating him, especially not now that he knew the truth about her.

“Good girl...” he began to tug at the sash. She ground her teeth in annoyance at his demeaning remark, but otherwise let it go.

“Janko, wait...” She could scarcely believe what she was about to ask, but they had been recreating for a couple of days anyway, and she couldn’t put that genie back in its bottle, even if she hadn’t just made a promise to keep recreating with him anyway.

“Huh?”

“Before you cut me lose, could you...”  she licked her lips, scarcely believing she was going to ask what she was going to ask, but remembering how much fun she had had with Velorek playing similar games: “Take advantage of the situation? Pretend I’m a prisoner or some tralk you’ve bought... to do anything with? Anything.”

Larraq crooked a half smile and tossed the knife onto the night stand. His hand stroked down, from her scar, across her abdomen, between her legs. “I’ve been taking advantage of you for a while,” he grinned. Aeryn gasped as his fingers traced their way across her skin until once more they were back at her entrance. “That’s to say, I’ve had my suspicions, and a lot of fun testing them out.” Aeryn felt her ears and cheeks burn with excitement mixed with indignation as his fingers began to stroke. His other hand, relieved of the knife, settled on her loomas and began to play there.

“You fekkik!” She hissed, although her grin disarmed her words. ~~~~

“Females...” Larraq chuckled as his fingers pushed deeper into her. Aeryn shuddered as he continued to push, growing ever deeper and firmer, tracing out an unseen pattern with his fingertips. She bit her lip, closed her eyes and began to rock her hips, frelling his fingers back. Her breathing quickened and she felt as though she wasn’t far off climaxing when suddenly he stopped and withdrew.

As Aeryn’s breathing began returning to normal she became aware that Larraq had moved to the edge of the bed and was leaning over, as though.... yes, he was rummaging through Lieutenant Sun’s personal storage locker.

“Larraq, what are you doing? Why have you stopped? Come back!” she demanded. He ignored her.

“Got it!” He declared, turning back to her with a malevolent twinkle in his eyes and holding a standard issue Peacekeeper vibrator in his hand.

“I need time to think about all this,” he commented as he busied himself out of her line of sight, between her legs. It felt like he was tucking the thing into her stocking top, strapping it to her thigh with something... What was he..?  Aeryn experienced a sharp intake of breath as he pushed the tip home. “And I’ve got some reports I need to look at.” He added casually as he flicked the vibrator on, stood and walked away towards the desk. “So if you can just… entertain yourself for a bit?” He smirked, sitting at the desk, turning his back to her.

Buzzing filled her ears, and soon enough swamped her every thought and sensation. Aeryn writhed and squirmed, trying to dislodge the vibrator, trying to escape the constant stimulation, but he’d lodged and strapped the frelling thing in expertly! She shuddered and, through tunnelled vision, snarled at Larraq’s impassive back as her first climax shook her. That ebbed soon enough, but she realised she was sweating now as she felt her second orgasm begin to build.

“Larraq! Please! Turn it off! I promised I’d do anything for you! I meant it! Ahhhhhh!” As the second orgasm began to subside and the third build, she wondered how long he planned on leaving her like this. Surely the thing would run out of charge some time? A further shuddering, gasping, screaming climax shook her body. She clenched her eyes and teeth shut as the cycle began again.

And then relief: the buzzing stopped and the wand withdrew.

Larraq was now moving over her. She opened her eyes to see that he was aligned head to toe, his cock bobbing in her face as he leant down and prepared to lick her out. She had time for just one deep breath before his cock pushed into her mouth, balls pressed against her nostrils. The smell of his musk was overpowering, but not as overpowering as his weight bearing down on her body or his cock pushing at the back of her throat. She had heard that some individuals enjoyed erotic asphyxiation, but she had never seen the attraction, not until now: His tongue was doing amazing things to her clit, but the sensations were heightened beyond anything she had experienced before by her situation. Tied helpless to the bed, crushed beneath Larraq’s weight, breathing  further restricted by his cock down her throat and balls blocking her nostrils, she began to see stars before her eyes and, just as she came, hard and shuddering, so she blacked out...

When she came to, she soon realised Larraq had made good use of her temporary incapacitation. She had been released from her spread eagle, but now lay face down across the edge of the bed, hands now tied behind her back, parted legs hanging over the edge of the bed. She tried moving her legs, but was somewhat unsurprised to feel that they were restrained at the ankles. Larraq stood beside her, a bottle of something in his hands.

“Have you finished yet, Captain?” she asked, quivering with anticipation. Clearly, he hadn’t, but she felt she ought to ask.

“You’ll know when I’ve finished,” he snorted. Moving round behind her, out of sight. A trickle of something cold ran between her eema cheeks, followed by a finger slipping to and fro. Lubricant, it must have been lubricant in the bottle.

“You’re not planning on...” she began to protest, guessing what he had in mind. She had never been eema-frelled before and wasn’t sure she wanted to start trying it now. But then she had asked him to treat her like a tralk and do anything with her.

“You will stay quiet unless spoken to!” he snapped, slapping her eema with a cracking, stinging blow.

Aeryn lapsed into silence, punctuated only by gasps, as his finger found her now lubricated eema and pushed inside. It was an odd, vaguely pleasant sensation, but she failed to see why...  the finger pulled out and something much larger started pressing against her. CHOLAK! Her eyes bugged out as his tip popped through her entrance. Aeryn panted, gasping for air, realising he was resting waiting for her to acclimatise before.... In he pushed, hands on her hips to steady her. Her tiny eema wasn’t built for his massive cock. She was experiencing sensations like she had never experienced before. He rocked, slowly and gently, but where he was frelling was not designed for boisterous treatment. Or any such treatment.  Aeryn wasn’t quite sure what happened next, but a strange and not unpleasant sensation shot through her like an electric charge.

Still gasping for air, she felt him withdraw. “Don't go away, I’ll be right back, just cleaning up a bit.” He was as good as his word. Less than thirty microts could have passed – she was still panting from her initiation – when he returned and once more positioned himself behind her.

“OK, tralk, so we’ve done everything else, now it’s time for the baby-maker frell,” he taunted, rubbing his cock up and down across her soaking labia. Up and down he teased. When was he going to get on and frell her!? Aeryn mewled in frustration.

“Are you ready?”

“MMM!” she squeaked with a nod, feeling him take hold of her hips. She wanted him to frell her properly, no more of his games, and she wanted it now!

“Promise to be my tralk and do anything I want, dress however I want..?”

“Larraq, you fekkik, I already promised that, just frell me!” In response he slapped her eema hard.

“Promise again, tralk!” Cholak she wanted his cock, she wanted release! Instead she got another slap on the buttock for her speechless delay, followed by another soothing rub.

“I promise!” she blurted out.

Her reward was instant: his cock pushed in, into the right place this time. All the way. She could feel him spooned up against her thighs and eema. She could feel his cock deep inside her. Her eyes were watering and her senses were tingling.

This was more like it!

He began to pump. His hands moved to cup her loomas, to play with them.

Wet, slapping sounds mixed with his grunts and her mewls and gasps.  His hands released her loomas.

He took a handful of her hair and tugged it, arching her back, the pain once again mixing with pleasure and tipping her over the edge. And him too, she realised as she felt the unmistakable buck of his cock as another warm flood of his seed poured into her.

Except this time was different - they both knew that she was not Lieutenant Aeryn Sun. She no longer had the excuse that she was under cover. She had told him who she was and then asked him to frell her senseless. The additional frisson of excitement caused by that knowledge made Aeryn’s climax even more potent.


	7. Seven

“She’s kept you till last because she wants to give you extra special tutoring,” Aeryn overheard one of the cadets teasing Altar through the door to the room where they changed in and out of flight suits. She paused, deciding not to go in but to wait for him out in the room with the flight simulators. She couldn’t help but eavesdrop. She knew it was Altar who was being teased, as he was indeed the last cadet slated for one to one tuition from her. All of the others had had their lessons and only he remained.

“I should be so lucky,” Altar riposted. “Like a beautiful lieutenant like her is going to look twice at any of us... bunch of lowly cadets...”

“She said she might come to the party, though?” Brin, another cadet, the one who seemed most inexperienced, sounded hopeful. “Yesterday?”

“In your dreams...” that was Bailar.

“And in mine!”

“She didn’t mention it today to me.”

“Me neither.” Well, she hadn’t actually planned on going, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to cultivate them a little? Who knew how much she could rely on Larraq, especially now he knew who she was, after all? But only if she could be sure she wouldn’t be the central attraction at an orgy.

“Look, guys, she’ll be waiting for my lesson – see you all in the mess for second meal, OK?” Altar finished, pushing through the door into the sims chamber, flight helmet in hand. Aeryn stepped back, out of sight of the changing room, waiting for the door to shut before announcing her presence to the distracted cadet with a cough.

“Oh, umm... Sorry to keep you waiting, ma’am,” he apologised when he came face to face with Aeryn. He was adorably cute, reminding her a little of John when she had first met him, and was clearly the most besotted with her. “I would have come earlier...”

“Cadet Altar,” she grinned at him. He would be the best one to cultivate, starting with a little light flirting. “Although that is generally good practice in Peacekeeper service, after you have graduated, I shall be very disappointed if you make a habit of coming too early in your dealings with me!”

“Umm... oh!” As Aeryn had expected, Altar turned a vivid shade of red in embarrassment as her double meaning sank in.

“Come on, let’s get you into that simulator and check out your moves,” she smirked, turning and walking away. She expected he’d be ogling her behind, so she treated the lad to a sashaying wiggle as she went. After all, with his assessment after second meal, it might be the last thrill he ever got.

“I think you’ve got all those moves now,” Aeryn announced, removing her helmet as they climbed out of the simulators after a good half arn of intensive tutoring.

“Umm, thanks,” he bit his lip and averted his eyes, showing his nerves at the prospect of the assessment later, no doubt. He needed distracting, and something to look forward to.

“How’re the plans for your party going?” she asked lightly as, in step, they began to walk back towards the locker rooms.

“Oh! Umm, great, thanks. Although all the other guys have asked women along...” his voice trailed off into sadness.

“And you haven’t?” She tutted.

“Umm, no,” he confessed.

“You’ve asked me haven’t you?” She snorted, responding without thinking.

“Yeah, but their dates are actually going to come,” he replied morosely. Oh frell, he might be technically ready, but he was in no mental state to undertake the assessment like this. She snagged his arm and pulled him to a halt, turning them both in towards each other.

“You pass your assessment, and I’ll come to your frelling party,” she scolded him. His features softened as a smile began to intrude upon his face. “Do well and you might even get a kiss.” His features brightened more.

“Just a kiss?” he pleaded. Aeryn laughed and began to walk away, shaking her head.

“Just a kiss! Come on, you need to get some food in you,” she called back, ignoring the question and changing the subject, not wanting to encourage him too much.

“And if I do really well?” he called after her.

“Fine! If you get a perfect score, then I promise you a frell!” She called over her shoulder with a laugh, a wink and a grin before disappearing into the instructors’ locker room. It was only a bit of flirtatious fun to lift his spirits and motivate him to do his best. Just a joke, really, and she knew that he would take it as such. They both knew that nobody ever got a perfect score. Well, almost nobody.

@@@

“I heard those Zeeta boys all passed,” Larraq, remarked, bringing Aeryn across a hot beverage and placing it on the table beside her. “That’s not happened on this carrier for a couple of cycles. Some guy called Cadet, sorry, sub-Officer, now, Altar even got a perfect score!”

Aeryn took a few microts before she processed what Larraq had said. Then her cheeks and ears flushed hot and red, remembering her promise in the flight sim bay.

“He’s a sweet boy.” She croaked. She felt totally discombobulated by the news and blurted out whatever came to the tip of her tongue while her head tried to work through it. “He was hoping I’d go to their party tonight.” She omitted to mention her promise to frell him if he got a perfect score, half hoping that if she ignored it enough then maybe the whole Universe, including Altar, would too. Maybe it would be best if she didn’t go, to avoid any awkward backtracking on her more intimate promise?

“Good idea, you should go, give me the night to recover!” Larraq teased. Aeryn continued flicking through Lieutenant Sun’s messages on the data terminal. Work went on, and even if Larraq knew her true identity, nobody else did, and she aimed to keep it that way, cadets or no.

“Maybe I will...” Well, she had told Draznot she intended to go. So maybe she ought to, just to ensure that fekkik never had grounds to bother her again?

“Consider it an order, then. It’ll give me the day off,” Larraq snorted. Aeryn blushed at the further remembrance that she had promised to do whatever Larraq told her to do. "You’ve been wearing me out!”

“Well, maybe we should try talking?” Aeryn scoffed, still burning with excitement at the idea.

“You never seemed the type who was big on talk,” he winked at her.

“Well, that changed when I met Crichton,” she admitted candidly.

“This Crichton, he must be something special for you to have stayed with him so long?”

“I... the other me... has been with you almost as long?”

“That’s because I’m an excellent recreation partner.” He winked. He wasn’t wrong, she reflected. And, as she smiled to herself over that thought, out of her line of sight, he pressed the start button on his audio recorder.

“Come on, Aeryn, I want to know. I’m interested in more than just your body, you know? Tell me about him.” He encouraged.

So, her guard now down, Aeryn began to talk to provide Larraq with all kinds of valuable intelligence.

@@@

Aeryn paused at the door and checked her outfit. Demure, calf length leather dress uniform coat, zipped up to the throat. Shiny, non-combat, dress uniform boots visible below the hem of coat. Hair pulled back in a loose braid. She looked every dench a respectable Peacekeeper Officer.

It was astonishing to her how quickly and easily she had slipped back into the role. But then, it had been her entire life until she had been caught up in Moya’s escape. And there was plenty about it that she liked and valued. Such as the camaraderie, the team work and being part of a unit, both in bad times and in good.

This was the place - deck lang, kappa twelve - inside she hoped Zeeta flight’s party would be going nicely – she was deliberately an arn or so late.

She pressed the comms button beside the door to the suite. “Lieutenant Sun here.”

A few microts later the door swung open and she stepped inside. It was a small, luxuriously appointed private mess, normally reserved for officers, dignitaries and special occasions. Such as a group of Prowler pilots graduating with flying colours. A selection of other rooms – sleeping chambers, a kitchen, a selection of sanitary suites – could be accessed through a dozen or so doors spaced around the other walls to the main entrance, but the party seemed to be here in the main room. Six pairs of eager, young, slightly inebriated, male, eyes watched as she stepped inside. She also counted five pairs of more neutral female eyes. Altar had been right – they had all asked females along to the party.  Some people were standing, some were seated on one of the three large leather couches that dominated one side of the room. There was the hum of ongoing conversation and empty glasses and bottles showing evidence of quite a bit of drinking. There was a buffet (largely untouched) on the other side of the room, along with a table laden with drinks (which even as she entered was enjoying considerably more traffic). One seated and one standing couple seemed to be engaged in a little light canoodling, but fortunately the party hadn’t degenerated into the sort of free-for-all orgy that these sorts of celebrations were sometimes known for.

“Hello boys,” she greeted them, pausing by the door. “I just dropped by to congratulate you all on your results,” she continued. A chorus of thank-yous greeted her remark before most people returned to their previous business. Everyone except Altar, that was: he detached himself from a knot of five people, where he had been playing gooseberry, and walked up to greet her in person.

“L... Lieutenant Sun.....” Altar stammered, eyes on stalks as he saluted her.

“No line of command tonight,” she admonished him without malice. He nodded, but still looked nervous.

“What... why are you here?” Yes, he was defiantly nervous. Good. Maybe he would be too nervous to remind her of her promise?

“Well, you did ask me nicely. And I did promise I’d come if you passed. I can go if it’s awkward?” Half of her wanted him to say ‘yes, please go,’ while the other half was more conflicted. He looked so... interesting.

“Of course not!” Altar panted, clearly desperately keen for her to stay.

“Fine, so why don’t you get me a drink while I get rid of my coat?” she smiled at Altar. He nodded dumbly. “A fellip nectar,” she supplied as, under Altar’s attentive gaze she unzipped her coat to reveal her flattering outfit beneath.

“Wow, you look nice!” he sighed, eyes running up and down her, taking in her tailored, black leather, burgundy-accented bodice, skirt and boots – the most flattering of Peacekeeper female formal dress uniforms, reserved for senior officers of her rank and above at special occasions only, and the burgundy accents for Special Ops only. He lurched off towards the drink table as she hung up her coat on the stand beside the door.

“Ah, that’s better, thanks,” Aeryn remarked, catching up with him, taking her drink and sipping it as her eyes scanned the room.

“Where did you get the outfit?” Altar asked, drawing her attention back to him. He was still checking her out, clearly unable to look anywhere but at her. She found she actually quite liked the attention. “I mean, it looks sort of like a uniform, but not like any...”

“What, have you never seen a special dress uniform like this before?” she teased, staring back at him. She guessed from the way the recently graduated cadet continued to gawp and drool that he had not. They weren’t exactly in everyday use. As she stood there grinning at him, he took a step into her space and felt his hand land on her hip. He stared her in the eye. Suddenly, she felt a lot less like she was the one with the upper hand.

“I got a perfect score,” he reminded her in a low growl as his other hand landed on her other hip and he gently pulled her loosely against him. She knew full well what he was referring to: her promise, made flirtingly and in jest, to frell him if he achieved just that.

“You... you should be very proud, you certainly made me very proud,” Aeryn replied, trying to work out how to distract him and turn him down, but meanwhile allowing him to hold her close and nuzzle his nose against her own cheek and nose. She could feel his hot, eager breath on her skin, smell his scent of razlak, leather and arousal. She felt a little turned on herself, but there was no way she was just going to jump into bed with him. One of his hands was now stroking the bare flesh of her shoulder blade area, the other caressing the more covered expanse of her eema.

“And you promised me a kiss regardless,” he reminded her as his lips sought and found hers, playfully exploring and seeking permission to deepen his kisses.

She willingly paid her dues for a few microts then pulled her mouth back from his.

“Party first.” She quietly insisted between deepening kisses and quickening breathing. “Frell later!” She added, hoping and anticipating that ‘later’ partying and alcohol and the passage of time would lead to a state of affairs where frelling might become plausibly deniable.

So saying she wriggled from his arms and slinked away from him, making for the centre of the room via a couple of the other ex-cadets. She made sure to catch each young man's eye as she went, to the annoyance of a number of the other females, running fingers slowly and teasingly across shoulders, pecs, arms... snapping a jaw shut. It was just a bit of fun. She outranked them all, nobody was going to try to stop her. She finished her parade in the centre of the room, having garnered the attention of most of those present, put her fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly, just as John had taught her to do.

The room fell silent as all remaining chit chat ceased and all remaining eyes turned on her.

“As the senior officer here it is my duty to congratulate Zeeta flight on their graduation!” She loudly announced. “And to declare this party officially underway.” There was another enthusiastic round of cheering. As it died down she spoke up again. “Let’s start with a game I learnt a couple of cycles ago! You have to try and guess what I’m thinking about but I can’t use any words, only actions. The person who guesses goes next, and as a prize gets to ask a favour, dare or forfeit of anyone they chose. But be careful what you ask for, as it will be someone else’s turn soon enough!”

A chorus of approval met her suggestion, as she thought it might. The game of charades was completely unfamiliar in the Uncharted Territories, after all, and unfamiliar fun was always welcome at these sorts of gatherings. And when they tired of that, thanks to John she had a whole bunch of other fun Erp games in her arsenal, too.

So, grinning like a cadet she stuck out her arms and zoomed around the room.

“Prowler! You’re a Prowler!” Brin shouted. Laughing and holding both thumbs aloft, Aeryn came to a halt in front of him.

“You got it! Your turn!” She declared. “What’s your… prize?”

“Well, I think Altar has a fellip nectar with your name on it!” Brin laughed back before he stepped into the centre of the floor and began to snarl and claw at the empty air. Excellent. It was just the sort of harmless forfeit she had hoped for, and it set the tone for future rounds.

@@@

“Question twelve!” Bailar’s date shouted from the couch opposite where Aeryn was standing, nursing another drink. “Is it larger than a Leviathan Pilot’s head?”

“No!” Elfor, one of the other ex-cadets, the one who was currently “it” replied from the centre of the loose circle. “It’s smaller than a Pilot’s head!”

Aeryn stood just behind one of the couches, happy to take a minor role in this particular game. An untold number of fellip nectars and razlaks over the preceding arn and a half of Erp parlour games had left her feeling quite mellow. Thus when she felt Altar press up against her from behind, wrapping one arm round her shoulder and the other round her waist she did not protest. His embrace felt secure and comforting, so why would she? His nose and lips worried against the sensitive skin on her neck below her ear. Wondering briefly why she felt a niggling feeling that it wasn’t right for her to do so, she wrapped her own arms over the arm around her waist and tilted her neck a fraction to grant him better access.

“Question 13: is it carried?” Someone called out.

“Did you know…” Altar purred as he rubbed his nose against the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe. “That I’d got full marks before you came tonight?” He growled and kissed her clavicle.

“Hmm. Yes,” she nodded slowly. confessing. Yes, she had known. Did it matter?

“Interesting,” he continued in a low timbre that sent shivers up and down her spine and ending somewhere in her belly. “And still you came?”

“I promised.” She replied simply, deliberately not clarifying whether she was referring to her attendance at the party or her promise should he gain full marks. She could feel his bulge pressed hard against her eema. She subtly leant back against him, raising the pressure just a tad.

“Is it a pulse pistol?” Someone playing the game shouted excitedly. It certainly felt like the barrel of one pressed against her.

“You got it!” Elfor declared, pointing at one of the females.

“Anyone fancy a different game?” Someone enquired. Aeryn was too pleasantly preoccupied with Altar’s lips on her neck and his hand, which had now dropped from her shoulder to cup her looma, to step in and play her previous and self appointed role as Master of Ceremonies. Instead she twisted in his arms until she faced Altar.

“Do you?” She asked. He leant in and locked lips with her in reply.

It was part of her undercover persona, she told herself as their tongues danced around each other. She needed to cultivate another ally now Larraq knew her identity... She’d promised Altar... And any remaining reservations she felt were drowned in alcohol. His hands cupped her face, holding her in position, hers spread out across his pleasantly built upper arms.

“Hey! You two!” Brin was standing beside them, trying to get their attention.

“Hmm?” Aeryn responded, turning her face towards the interloper while Altar busied himself at her neck.

“We’re playing cards next, one item of clothing per hand!” Brin announced. Dren! She should have been paying more attention, she could have headed this off! “Are you in?”

“You fancy it?” Altar asked her, a twinkle in his eye as his fingers tugged hopefully at her belt.

Aeryn bit her lip and shook her head, relieved that Brin had given her the option on a platter to decline. No way was she playing strip pooka with this lot! Those days were behind her.

“No, but you guys have fun!” Altar told Brin, seeming, to Aeryn’s relief, to instantly pick up on and mirror her reluctance, despite his very recent enthusiasm. Brin nodded and walked off. As he did so, Altar took her hand and led her towards the drinks table, snagging a bottle of Razlak, before heading on towards one of the doors at the back of the suite. In her alcohol sodden state Aeryn was slow to process his intentions.

“Where are we going?” She chuckled as, arm now around her waist, he opened the door.

“Bedroom,” Altar declared. “We need to claim one before they all get taken by losing pooka players! Lights one quarter,” Altar instructed, resulting a diffuse, soft glow illuminating the room. Aeryn stood, staring at the huge, room-dominating bed just a few steps in front of her as her alcohol-addled mind noted the sound of the door closing and locking behind them.

What the frell was she doing here, her inner voice began to demand? Oh yes, she had promised if Altar got a perfect score in his assessment then she would frell him! But... John? John... John need never know. And he and D’Argo... needed her to use every resource to find and rescue them. Altar could be a useful resource! And how was that exactly? Well... what if... Look, she’d made a promise, and a promise was a promise!

“Aeryn, Lieutenant Sun, are you alright?” Altar asked from beside her, a hand on her elbow, his voice full of concern. “You… you don’t have to...” he began, unable to hide the slight tone of disappointment.

“I… I did promise.” That, and she needed to cultivate him as an asset. She turned to see his concerned frown, chasing that and her own blank expression away with what she hoped was a disarming grin. “And, as a senior officer, I would be setting a bad example if I went back on a promise,” she told him. He grinned broadly and moved back into her personal space. Her heart beat madly in her chest. Her stomach felt like it was doing backflips. Butterflies. Or rattlers. That’s what John had called them.

John.

John wasn’t here.

Altar pulled her into his arms, crushing her lips to his and her loomas to his chest. A tiny, sober voice at the back of her head informed her that he was undoing the fastening at the back of her skirt. She told the voice to hush. The voice tutted as she felt her skirt pool around her ankles and his hand cup her near naked eema. Ignoring it, and focussing on the task at hand, she turned the pair of them through ninety degrees and, hand splayed on his chest, pushed him back to sit. Gyrating, giving Altar a fine view of her leather-encased loomas, she shuffled forward onto her knees straddling him, leaning in to kiss him again as she felt his hands running along her thighs, up her back and into her hair. She grabbed a couple of pillows and, with his full cooperation, slid them beneath his head and shoulders to prop him up as she straddled him. She leant forwards to kiss him. She leant back so her hands could play with his chest. She was having so much fun it was ridiculous.

“You’re over dressed,” she growled into Altar’s mouth after a good few microts of canoodling. She leant back, tugged his shirt open, running her hands across the lithe, youthful musculature of his pecs and shoulders pulling his shirt wide and away. Then she leant in to kiss him again, on his lips, on his neck. He reciprocated in a most satisfactory manner.

“I like you,” she whispered in his ear. “I want to spend the rest of the night with you.” Altar beamed and nodded his understanding, tugging open the fastening of her bodice until it was loose enough for her loomas to spill out, over the top.

“Suck my loomas!” she ordered, rearing up till they were right in his face. To her satisfaction she felt his hands moving to frame then caress her globes. Then, to her delight, as instructed, he latched on and suckled.

Aeryn tugged Altar’s belt open, sliding back to her feet, and leant forwards to tug Altar’s trousers down his hips. He helped her, lifting his eema off the bed, then lifting his legs into the air until his boots and trousers were finally tossed aside by Aeryn.

“Looks like someone’s interested in more than razlak,” Aeryn chuckled, running long fingers across the high tent in his black undershorts. Aeryn turned, sliding down into his lap again, this time in a spoon, trapping his bulging shorts beneath her, writhing and gyrating in his lap. She felt Altar’s hands round her hips, guiding her down, and then diverting, one to stroke her half-covered thigh, one to slide up and cup her looma.

Aeryn grinned with unalloyed delight as she rocked her hips, grinding herself against his doubly trapped cock. It felt so hard it could have been made of armour plate! She reached between her legs and stroked the tip through his shorts, which she could feel were already damp with precum. Altar squeaked. Aeryn grinned, the tip of her tongue playing in the corner of her parted lips, then lifted her hips, hooked Altar’s shorts with her thumbs and pushed them down.

Dropping back onto his lap, she could feel him even more deliciously now, sliding slickly across her as she gave him a few rocks. Aeryn lifted herself a few denches out of his lap again and between them they pushed down her own underwear. Her hand slipped between her thighs and, as she lowered herself back into Altar’s lap, she guided him to her entrance.

“Ahhhhhh!” Aeryn gasped, open mouthed, smiling radiantly as she lowered herself onto him. Altar’s hands cupped her loomas, sensitive almost to the point of discomfort, and as she started to rock his frantically quickening breathing and gasps told her he wouldn’t last long if she carried on like this. She rolled off of him and onto her back, allowing him to set the pace for a bit.

“Oh Cholak, thank you!” Altar gasped. His appreciative reaction caused Aeryn to smile. He was so like someone else... John! But... John! What are you doing!? The little voice protested. But it soon fell into sullen, sulky silence, ignored as Altar slid down between her knees and began to lavish attention on her sex with his mouth.

Only John. Only ever John had done this quite like this for her before. It felt so good. So why was there a wetness on her cheek, as though a single tear was falling?

She wiped her face on the sheet and allowed Altar to slide back up and cover her, once again losing her reservations in the sensual, alcohol-soaked haze.

“You get full marks again!” She encouraged him, balling her fingers into the short hair on his neck and head as she felt him position himself and then slide into her, taking her breath away. Slowly, steadily and methodically, Altar began to frell her like it was his first and last time.

“Cholak, Aeryn!” She heard him gasp through gritted teeth as he arched his back, drove in hard, one last time, and unloaded himself into her. She could feel her fingers digging deep into his shoulder muscles as a warm, tingling, glow filled her belly and spread outwards until it reached the tips of her fingers and toes.

To Aeryn’s delight, that wasn’t the end: Altar spent most of the remains of the night gorging himself on her. He was slow, gentle, considerate, almost reverential – it reminded her of the way John recreated. Or made love, as John called it. They must have drifted off to sleep about fourth arn and woken, limbs still entwined, at around sixth arn. Altar’s soft kisses and caresses led inevitably to another arn of... Aeryn hesitated to call it lovemaking. That word was reserved for John alone. But it felt pretty close to it.

“I have to go soon,” Altar informed her just after seventh arn. “Duties...” Aeryn nodded solemnly. They couldn’t spend all day here, anyway. The room booking would expire soon and the cleaners would arrive. “But I want to recreate with you again,” he added. And Aeryn nodded solemnly a second time, before she even realised that she had more than fulfilled her promise and was under no obligation, self-imposed or otherwise, to do so again.

When Aeryn finally staggered, somewhat bow-legged, and dehydrated... from the alcohol, she told herself... back to her room, the carrier was just starting to rouse again for the day. It had been one hezmanna of a night. She’d lost count how many times she’d climaxed, or that Altar had climaxed inside her. There was definitely something interesting about that young man. 

As she flicked on the light to her quarters, she was relieved to see Larraq had already left for the morning, as she wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep off one of the most enjoyable nights she had had in a long time.

@@@

John awoke to the glorious sight of Aeryn’s thick, wavy, raven hair, inches from his face. As more of the room came into view, he remembered: they were in an alternate reality, their plans derailed by a fault on the transport pod and an over-eager Peacekeeper recruitment squad.

But his wonderful, beautiful, loving wife had rescued him and D’Argo, and now here they were, in a stolen Marauder, on their way back to the transport pod, the wormhole and if he was right, off to Earth to visit his family.

Damn he loved his wife.

Despite her low snoring.

John scooted across the bed until he was snuffled up against Aeryn, face buried in her soft hair, hand sliding across her smooth, cool hip.

Aeryn sighed and stirred slightly.

“Morning, sunshine,” John purred as his nose nuzzled her neck, his lips wiffled against her shoulder, trailing kisses along the ridge line until he reached her neck. Her eyes were still softly shut, but she was surely awake. She gasped, grinned and chewed on her bottom lip. John propped himself up, all the better to nuzzle her neck, while his hand slid up her body until he cupped her looma, rolling the nub between thumb and forefinger. It never occurred to him that he hadn’t actually seen her loomas clearly since the rescue.

“Sprout’s not awake, and didn’t you say we’ve a couple of arns till we get to Enstor?” John spoke softly, quietly, as befitted the circumstances. “Do you fancy a little..?”

Before he even finished his question, Aeryn turned, sucking onto his lips with her own. Her hand stole down between their bodies, wrapping around his cock and caressing it gently, slipping up and down, balls and all, coaxing his morning glory into a full-blown hard-on. John guessed he had the answer to his question. Not that he could easily continue the conversation, as Aeryn seemed intent on keeping his mouth occupied with kissing hers. She pulled him across her, rolling onto her back and parting her legs as he settled between them.

“You’re feeling frisky this morning!” John chuckled as she guided him towards her entrance. He could feel how moist she already was from the way his tip slid across her, slipping into place, ready to go. The fragrance of her arousal reached his nostrils, firing his desire upwards into full blown lust.

She grinned back and nodded slowly. John fixed his eyes on hers and pushed. He loved looking her straight in the eye when he penetrated her – she never disappointed. Nor did the silky smooth sensation of sliding into her tight wetness. He set up a slow rhythm, revelling in the feel of her around him, against him... He arched his back a little so he could kiss her nipple. When she sighed at the back of her throat, he returned his mouth to her lips and neck, satisfied that that small matter had been attended to.  She wrapped her ankles behind his hips, driving him deeper. All four hands wandered as they willed, teasing, caressing, never staying anywhere too long.

Her hips were bucking now, and her breath panting. “You close, babe?” he whispered. She clenched her eyes tight shut and nodded, then threw her head back and let out a succession of short, staccato, gasping sighs. Her hips squeezed him painfully tight, and her fingernails dug deep into his shoulders. If this wasn’t her climax, it was a pretty good approximation of it. He gave himself over to the sensations of the moment, happy now to cease his self-distraction. With a long gasp of his own he felt the pumping, tingling charge course through him like a riptide as he released himself into her core.

She was his, his Aeryn Sun. His and his alone. It felt magnificent.

@@@

“So this is where you’ve been all day?” Larraq drawled, as he invited himself aboard the transport pod.

Aeryn looked up from where she was crouching in front of the pilot’s seats, putting the finishing touches to her repairs.

“Hardly,” she shrugged. “I’ve only been here about two arns.”

“Why waste even that time?” Larraq snorted, draping himself into the left hand pilot’s chair. “That looks like tech work. And as for this bucket of dren...”

“It needed repairing, I wanted to make sure it was done right,” she answered, her chin held high in defiance. “And we can’t frell all day long, Janko.”

“Matter of opinion.”

“Matter of simple biology,” she countered with the merest hint of a smile. “Even you wanted a day off yesterday.”

“So, did you fix it?” Larraq asked. She suspected he was changing the subject, knowing full well she had gone out yesterday with the intention of partying with Zeeta flight.

“I think so.” She replied as he climbed down and offered a hand to help her to her feet.

“So, what now?” He asked, pulling her into a lose hug. “Do you fancy a..?” His hands slid up and down her back and across her eema.

“Actually... Yes... but no,” she revelled in his look of confusion.

“Explain,” he demanded.

“If your hand explores my eema carefully enough...” He did. And immediately seemed to settle on the thin, raised bumps running from hip to upper thigh across her buttocks.

“Are you wearing some of your new, special uniform under your leathers?” Larraq asked with a happy grin.

“I’ll leave you to think about that for the next arn or two,” she teased, grinning back. “Because we’ve got a senior staff meeting to attend, remember?”

Larraq groaned in frustration. She was right. They did. He wondered how he was going to survive.

@@@

“Lighting half strength!” Aeryn instructed.

The door to their quarters had barely shut behind them before Larraq seized the top of her tank top and ripped it asunder, tossing it aside. Aeryn’s loomas spilled out and Larraq grabbed them, squeezing them roughly. Aeryn gasped and writhed in his hands. She knew how he felt. The meeting had been interminable, and all the while she had struggled not to think about what she knew was on his mind.

“You’re out of uniform, Lieutenant,” he scolded playfully as he wrestled with her belt.

“You may have to discipline me,” Aeryn riposted with a chuckle as she spun to face him. They each kicked off their light, onboard boots – Aeryn was grateful they were not wearing combat boots as they would have proven frustrating.

“I may...” he replied as they playfully wrestled each other, edging towards the bed, pulling at clothing as they went. She pushed up his t-shirt, hands splaying out, enjoying the feel of his well-muscled, lightly haired chest as she did so. With his help it was soon off, tossed into the same corner as her torn tank. He finally tugged the fastenings of her trousers loose. As he began pushing them down over her slim hips she had already started loosening his trousers.

Larraq chuckled happily as her trousers dropped floorwards, exposing long legs encased in the black stockings, held up with a plain black garter belt, which she knew he had been pondering on the existence of for the whole, boring meeting. A tiny, most-unpeacekeeper like black lace thong completed her uniform.

“As per your orders, captain,” she smirked as his hands made a sweep of hips, buttocks and the backs of her thighs, exploring the feel of her. As he did so, she managed to wrestle his trousers down over his shapely hips, hooking her thumbs into his black undershorts and dropping them at the same time.

As his erection sprang free, Aeryn felt her calves against the bed and a microt later Larraq used the leverage against her to tip her over. She tumbled backwards, Larraq falling on top of her and pinning her arms. He leant in and kissed her roughly. Aeryn reciprocated his kiss. Larraq levered up and back to his feet. With a dominating demonstration of his strength he grabbed her hips, pulling her towards him easily until her eema was at the edge of the bed. Aeryn grinned up at him, biting her bottom lip as he seized her calves and hoisted them aloft, over his shoulders.

Aeryn’s hands reached between her parted legs and pulled the thin strip of fabric aside from her labia, as his cock waved around, knocking against her fingers, her thigh, her abdomen and her entrance, lacking direction. She planned to fix that. Deft, long fingers claimed his erect cock and, half stroking, half pulling, lined it up at her entrance. She rubbed it up and down across her lips once, twice, working her clit and lubricating his tip.

“You TRALK Aeryn!” Larraq laughed through a snarl.

“Frell!!!” She hissed, gritting her teeth. Larraq grunted in the affirmative and pushed in, his arms around her thighs pulling her back towards him as he did so. She felt her walls parting softly, easily, yielding to him as he drove in hard and deep.

He felt fantastic. He looked pretty good, too in the half light, staring down at her as he frelled her. Not that he didn’t look good in full light, too, but the half-light added something both to his appearance and the general atmosphere.

Larraq snarled and growled, pumping her hard and fast. Aeryn could feel her loomas wobbling back and forth from the force of his pounding, despite their relatively smallness and firmness. Cholak it felt good! His hands smoothed up and down her legs. He turned his face and his mouth gummed at her calf, careful, she speculated, not to rip her precious stockings with his teeth. It wasn’t like they could easily acquire more aboard a Command Carrier, after all.

Then suddenly she was empty! He had pulled his cock out! She shot him a frustrated frown, but even as she did so his hands were encouraging her to roll over. She needed no further instruction, flipping over onto her hands and knees, legs apart, eema presented to him. She felt his strong, confident, commanding hands on her hips as he positioned himself behind her, between her calves. Hands slid around her hips, one sliding his cock head firmly up and down across her labia, the other...

Aeryn gasped as he slapped her  eema harshly, then rubbed the still stinging spot.

“Again!” she hissed. He obliged, harder this time, while the fingers of his other hand pulled her thong further aside and away. Then he slapped her eema again. She responded with an animalistic, yet happy snarl as he guided his tip in.

He drove forward. She drove back. He drove into her. Impaled on his cock once again, she rocked back and forth. Hands grabbed her loomas, squeezing hard. A hand grabbed her hair, tugging sharply. Her back arched.

“YES! JANKO!” She cried out her release. Another half dozen thrusts and she felt him grinding down, straining, growling, pulling harder than ever on her hair as he poured his load into her. “Oh, yes!” she voiced her satisfaction as she allowed herself to tumble face down onto the bed. Larraq toppling beside her a microt later.

@@@

The sound of the comms console on the desk woke Aeryn from her post-coital slumber. Larraq stirred beside her, but as she seemed far more awake, she swung her long legs, still encased in her black stockings, out of bed, and padded over to the desk.

“Yes?” she demanded, tapping the comms channel open.

“Lieutenant Sun?”

“Yes?”

“It’s officer Darell, records department.” Aeryn was suddenly fully awake. Records department meant news of D’Argo and John. At least, she hoped it did.

“Have you got something for me?” She asked hopefully as she sat at the desk.

“We’ve tracked down the recruiting party you asked about. The only one that was on Enstor in the time you specified is a permanent unit assigned to the light carrier Dalla Kappu Seven.”

“Excellent. How far away is... Dallu Kappu Seven?” That sounded like the designation for one of the older, smaller less well-equipped carriers that were now mostly used for ancillary duties. Including training. It made sense.

“Three days at hetch seven,” Excellent, the officer had anticipated her needs well – hetch seven was the maximum speed for a Marauder. Not that she would be going by Marauder, she reminded herself – she and John needed the transport pod to traverse the wormhole.

“Larraq! Wake up!” She demanded, shoving his arm roughly.

“What, you want more?” He groaned. “You’re insatiable, woman!”

“Not everything is about sex!” she scolded him. “The records department have found Crichton and my son! I need to get going. Are you coming?”

Larraq was sitting up in a flash, alert, inscrutable. But already pulling a t-shirt over his head. “Right with you, Aeryn!” He announced, leaping out of bed.


	8. Eight

An arn later Aeryn was piloting the transport pod towards the location of carrier Dallu Kappu Seven. Captain Larraq wandered around, prodding and poking, generally looking unhappy with the ship.

“This thing is so primitive – we should have brought a Marauder,” Larraq snorted. Well, at least he’d come out and actually said it.

“We couldn’t, you can’t survive a wormhole in a Peacekeeper ship.” Aeryn sighed, explaining for what felt like the tenth time.

“Hmm, of course,” Larraq nodded.

“Larraq, see if you can raise them, find out about their disposition,” Aeryn demanded, still busy with the flight controls. Larraq nodded and slipped into the co-pilot's seat, tapping on the console.

“Hello, Dallu Kappu Seven, this is Captain Janko Larraq, Peacekeeper Special Operations, sending authorisation - sqawk...” he pressed a button on a small device in his hand which transmitted an ident code.

Silence indicated they were still too far off to talk to the carrier. Aeryn ground her teeth in frustration.

“Captain Larraq, what can we do for you?” came a crackly reply. Aeryn felt herself breath again as she relaxed her jaw. It was a long way still for radio-type communications. But at least they had a signal.

“I am authorised to collect two recent recruits from you, sending their details...” There was another silence.

“Something’s going on,” Aeryn arched an eyebrow. “Maybe...” she was interrupted by the comms crackling back into life.

“Hello Captain, this is Lieutenant Mazko, Peacekeeper Military Intelligence officer for Dallu Kappu Seven. We share an interest in your people.”

“You have them?” Larraq probed.

“Well, yes and no,” Mazko vacillated. “They were on this carrier, they were brought here for processing after their recruitment a weeken or so ago. But there was something strange about both the adult and the infant. Lieutenant Sun, one of your people, volunteered to pose as his... rescuer, I suppose you could call it, to try to gain his confidence and find out more about him in a covert op.”

Larraq and Aeryn exchanged a look which said ‘well, that’s awkward. But not nearly as awkward as had Aeryn hailed the carrier.’

“So where are they now?” Larraq asked.

“We’ve been tracking their Marauder,” Mazko replied. “They just reached Enstor, the commerce planet in your sector.”

Aeryn had already changed course to Enstor, which fortunately was only just over a day away. Good news: that was a lot better than the weeken or so the pod would take to reach the carrier! She’d almost forgotten what good news sounded like.

“Thank you, Lieutenant, you’ve been most helpful,” Larraq signed off.

“Well, at least it’s closer than the carrier,” Aeryn remarked. “But we’re not going to get there till tomorrow, even at maximum speed.”

“Time for some more recreation, then?” Larraq suggested with a sexy drawl and hooded eyes staring hungrily at her.

Aeryn bit her lip. Then she nodded with a smirking grin.

@@@

Larraq waited till Aeryn seemed fast asleep, then crept out of bed, heading for the flight deck, being sure to lock the door behind him, lest Aeryn wake up and follow.

He seated himself at the comms panel. He pulled out his ident device, plugged it into the pod’s comma system and hailed Lieutenant Sun on their private, encrypted channel.

“Aeryn! Aeryn, are you there? It’s Janko.” He was surprised and more than a little relieved when she answered.

“Janko, what are you doing...?” her voice crackled across the comms. Still half a day off, but reception should have been better. She sounded mildly peeved. Although that wasn’t an unusual state for her, Larraq laughed to himself.

“Can you talk? Are you alone?” he demanded.

“Yes... Look...” She definitely sounded annoyed. Business as usual, then.

“Look, I know you’re on a secret mission. Mazko filled me in. I’m actually calling you about that. How’s it going?”

“Fine. Well, we got to Enstor just fine. My cover is intact. So, do you know about the…” she hesitated as though considering whether to reveal a secret, before remembering who she was talking to: “wormhole?”

“Trust me, Aeryn, I probably know more than you do,” Larraq chuckled.

“How? No. Look. Apparently, this is where the wormhole and his transport pod should have been found. The adult male and the infant are sleeping, you know about them? They are both fine, although the adult…”

“Crichton.” Larraq supplied to prove he was indeed familiar with the mission.

“Yes, Crichton... He has been wondering where the pod has gone,” Lieutenant Sun informed Larraq over the comms link.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t know, we’d look for it in the morning. It was late here when we arrived.”

“Good, look, I have the pod and... you’re not going to believe this... your doppelgänger!”

“My… doppelgänger!?” Larraq heard her hiss and swear under her breath, but she soon rallied. Larraq wondered what her reaction could mean. “So, you’ve got the pod? I’m not sure why it's so important, but he was frantic when we couldn’t find it at the port.”

“Yes, look, the alternate Aeryn explained it – they need the pod to traverse the wormhole or they’ll turn to soup. And it's got to be him piloting it, or they could end up anywhere. Only he has the ability.”

“Fine. I can keep him busy looking for a few arns. When can you get here?”

“Mid morning tomorrow. We should meet up and plan how we’re going to play this. Meet without our respective imposters. Make a plan that’s in our interests.”

“Agreed,” Aeryn replied. “Unless one of us comms otherwise, we should meet at eleventh arn…”

@@@

“So where is it?” John seethed in frustration at Aeryn, whose back was fortunately turned towards him.  The transport pod had vanished, it seemed, and without it, so had their immediate chances of getting off Enstor and down the wormhole to Earth.

Aeryn sat at the comms console on the Marauder, pretending to look like she was searching for the pod. “We’ll find it...” she spun her seat to face him and reached out a hand to lay on his arm to reassure him. He looked down at it, then lifted it, bringing the knuckles to his face, to his lips. He kissed it softly and set it back down. She could grow to like this sort of treatment. It was very pleasantly strange.

“Where’s your ring, Aeryn?” he asked softly. Her what? His eyes seemed to harden and turn icy blue. Whatever her ring was, it must be something the Aeryn Sun from his reality was supposed to have on her.

“I left it on the pod...” she answered, thinking fast, “for safe keeping. While I was undercover.”

He nodded, seeming satisfied. His expression seemed to thaw. She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Another good reason to find the pod,” he smiled, kneeling in front of her, his hands reached out, fingers snagging the zip that was holding her vest shut.

“Shouldn’t we be looking for the pod?” she chuckled as he eased the zip down. She didn’t stop him though as he slid his hands under the leather, across her loomas, parting the vest and sliding it off her shoulders. It was a pleasant way to pass the time until Larraq arrived, after all.

“Not that I’m objecting,” she stifled a gasp as he traced a line down between her loomas with his fingertip. 

“When did your scar heal up, baby?” he asked, finger tracing a circle just under her loomas. There were those frozen eyes again.

“Scar?” She frowned, gave a little shake of her head. He slid back to his feet, stepped back... pulled a pulse pistol out of the holster on his hip and pointed it at her. What the frell!?

“Spell baby, baby,” he demanded enigmatically. Aeryn was completely taken aback by his sudden change in attitude towards her. When did he start wearing a pulse pistol? He didn’t have one on the carrier. She hadn’t noticed one earlier, either. She was shocked and stunned at the turn of events.

“Bu....” she began, then dried up. His expression was chillingly hostile.

“Oh, not again,” he remarked, completely inexplicably. He seemed peeved. “Where’s Aeryn, Aeryn?”

“I’m Aeryn,” she insisted. “Put the gun down before I pantak jab you, you drannit!”

“No, I’m Aeryn!” he laughed, mimicking her but with no trace of humour. “No ring, no scar, no ability to spell in English. So who the frell are you?”

Oh frell! She’d been exposed. With a gun pointed at her head she decided to come clean.

“I’m Lieutenant Aeryn Sun, Peacekeeper Special Operations. There’s something very strange about you and D’Argo. As you claimed to know me, I was assigned to investigate, find out who YOU are.”

“Investigate, huh? Figures.” He snorted and seemed slightly mollified, but he didn’t lower the gun. “And the sex, was that part of your mission parameters?”

“I found you interesting. Did you not find the sex enjoyable? I did.” She shrugged. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to her. No harm, no foul. What was he upset about?

“Interesting? Interesting? Shit….” he sighed and slumped into a chair, no longer pointing the gun at her, but not holstering it either. What the hezmanna was going on in that oversized head of his? “And the other Aeryn? My Aeryn?”

“I have no frelling idea,” she harrumphed. “Maybe she’s with the pod and this precious frelling ring of hers?”

“Oh, Lieutenant Aeryn Sun,” he sighed and shook his head, “What am I going to do with you?”

“I suppose a frell’s out of the question?” she asked. He laughed. She wasn’t sure whether to take that as a Yes or a No.

So she stood up, keeping a wary eye on the pulse pistol, and dropped her trousers. It was worth a try...


	9. Nine

There it was, just as Larraq had promised: Crichton’s Leviathan transport pod. Lieutenant Sun approached cautiously from the rear flank, using other nearby ships and port machinery as cover to minimise the chance she might be spotted by the other Aeryn Sun should she be on or near the pod. Reaching the bottom of the steps, she drew her stun pistol and, catlike, began to ascend the steps to the cabin.

She was amazed that Crichton hadn’t locked her up or killed her. Maybe he had his reasons but she couldn’t fathom them.

The main door recognised her thumbprint, unlocking and sliding open, just as she had expected it would. Apparently, it was her pod, after all. She could hear raised voices from the main chamber, so, under cover of their racket, she crept forward.

“It’s not up to you, Janko!” Aeryn heard her own voice shouting. Frell! The other Aeryn was still aboard! Larraq was supposed to have got rid of her for their rendezvous. She and Larraq would just have to improvise. Lieutenant Sun ventured to lean round the hatchway. The other Aeryn was in a stand-up, argument with Larraq. “You need to be off this ship! I can’t risk Crichton finding out about us!”

Lieutenant Sun stepped out into the doorway, raised her arm and took aim at Aeryn’s back. Larraq’s expression of surprise betrayed her and the other Aeryn span, catching a momentary glimpse of Lieutenant Sun, just as she pulled the trigger.

Aeryn Sun-Crichton grunted, convulsed and crumpled to the floor.  The gun was now pointed at Larraq.

“Whoa!” Larraq calmed his subordinate, raising his hands. “I’m with you, remember?”

Aeryn stepped further into the chamber, but she didn’t lower her weapon.

“From what she was saying, I guess she knows you know she’s the Aeryn from this alternate reality thing?” Aeryn asked, then frowned as she tried to retrospectively parse her sentence.

“That would be an accurate assessment,” Larraq snarked, nodding.

“How long did you take to work out she wasn’t me?”

“A couple of days. She’s got this scar thing where apparently, I stabbed her...”

“Yes, that’s how he worked out I wasn’t his Aeryn too. No scar. This morning. I guess his eyes were busy elsewhere? Did you frell her?”

“Quite a bit. I still am actually.”

“What?” Aeryn frowned. Larraq laughed.

“Well, obviously not RIGHT NOW, but why not?” He shrugged. He had a point, she decided. It was the Peacekeeper way, after all. “She’s absolutely loving it. All the more so since I found her out. The things we’ve got up to... I never knew you could be so kinkoid,” he smirked.

“I thought we were getting a bit stale, actually,” Aeryn sneered, feeling just a little annoyed and jealous.

“Maybe we were. But me and her have got a bit of the old magic back. Have you frelled him?”

“A few times. But not since he found me out. The scar. And apparently, I ought to have been wearing some ring on my hand? And of course I can’t speak his language as well as the other me.”

“So he’s stopped frelling you?” Larraq seemed as surprised as she was. “Why… what…?”

“He’s from one of those faithful pair bond cultures, apparently, and... Well. I’m not her.”

“Pfft. Crazy.” Larraq huffed but nodded. “The other Aeryn... we were arguing about that when you came in, she was telling me I had to disappear. Saying Crichton would go crazy with jealousy if he found out she’d frelled me.”

“It’s funny... I find his obsession with her... interesting.”

“So, you’d want to frell him again?”

“I want her life!” Aeryn snorted, not entirely in jest. “But it’s not just that. My mission is to get his trust, to find out about alternate realities, wormholes and the rest. It could be very valuable to us. That’s why I’m here in the first place, after all. And I’ve still plenty to find out. He told me this trip was supposed to take two monens – that’s how long I’d reckoned I had.”

“Sounds like we’d be better off if you could persuade him you were her,”  Larraq sniffed, nodding towards the crumpled, unconscious Aeryn.

“What would you do with her?” Aeryn asked. Larraq grinned. Aeryn sighed, rolled her eyes and shook her head. “And when I got back?”

“Well, I hadn’t figured that out yet. But it sounds like it’s our duty, after all, as Peacekeepers...” Larraq suggested with a laugh.

“But he knows I’m not her.” Aeryn pointed out the obvious flaw in the plan.

“If we could fake that scar... you could requisition her ring, I could give you a copy of my recordings of what she’s told me about her and Crichton... Then we get you through the wormhole...”

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Aeryn protested.

“Granted, yes, the speaking his language thing is trickier… you’re going to have to be careful and a quick study.”

“The med techs on the carrier put me into this deep hypnosis thing to learn. I’m picking it up fast. But what’s in it for you?”

“Duty to the mission? To the Peacekeepers?” Larraq pointed out. “Besides, I reckon we’ve got a handful of frells left before we go our separate ways. This way, I still get to frell Aeryn Sun. And, to repeat, the Peacekeepers get you finding out about alternate realities and wormholes. All I have to do is persuade her that you overpowered us both and then persuade the people who sent you on this mission that she’s the real you. You’re a smart woman, Aeryn, so’s she  – she’ll know she has to pretend to be you or end up in someone’s Aurora chair.”

“Fine, so how about the scar? If we can’t fake that...”

“I’m a master with my knife. Pull up your shirt and her shirt, then make yourself comfortable. I’ll go get the dermal regenerator from the med kit so we can heal your cut when I’m done.”

@@@

John sat on the Marauder flight deck, flicking morosely through channels on the main data terminal. “57 channels and nuthin’ on!” he grumbled. After Lieutenant Sun had tried and failed to seduce him,  and shortly afterwards worked out he wasn’t going to kill her or imprison her either, she’d flounced off, claiming they needed to get supplies. John was fine with that – he needed space to decide what to do next, what to do about her, what to do about his Aeryn, what to do about the missing pod.

“Peacekeeper Marauder?” the comms crackled into life. “This is Enstor Port Control.”

“Yep, this is Commander Wingnut, what is it?”John snarked in frustration.

“You told us to notify you of any Leviathan transport pods docking at the port,” came the disembodied voice. “One landed about half an arn ago. The same ident signature as the one that was here last weeken.”

Game on! John rushed around the Marauder, gathering essentials, gathering D’Argo, and within three macrots was heading out. He couldn’t afford to leave D’Argo with Lieutenant Good Little Peacekeeper while he checked the pod out, not now she knew he knew she wasn’t his Aeryn. If it was Aeryn on the pod, which surely it was, then he felt a bit guilty running out and leaving this one without so much as a goodbye, but he was sure she’d get over it.

Ten macrots later he was outside the transport pod, standing by the main door. It was manually locked: Not even his bio signature would open the door.

“Aeryn?” he tapped the comms pad. “It’s me, John. Are you in there?”

There was a long silence. Frell. Maybe she was out buying supplies too? He hoped the two Aeryns didn’t run into each other. That would not likely end well. It hadn’t with him and his doppelgänger.

He turned to walk down the steps. Just then the door swung upon and long, lithe arms swung round his shoulder, pulling him into a tight embrace.

“I can’t believe you found me so quickly!” Aeryn gushed excitedly, pinning him against the deep recess of the doorway, smothering him with passionate kisses.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” he explained during breaks in her oral assault, indicating the toddler sandwiched between them at knee level.

“Mama!” D’Argo tugged at her jacket. She leant down to kiss the boy and wrap him in a stifling hug.

“I’ve missed you!” she gushed at the child, hoisting him aloft, allowing John to notice his mom’s ring on her hand.

“Where you been, babe?” he asked.

“Looking for you?” she lilted as the trio made their way inside the pod.

“Oh, babe...” he glanced at the ring on her hand. The ring was only one part of the puzzle. He wouldn’t be fooled again. “D’Argo, could you run along to the flight deck, give mommy and daddy a microt?” the child scampered off happily. John watched him go, then looked back to see Aeryn frowning at him.

“What is it, John?” she asked.

“I met another you. She didn’t have your scar, from Larraq... Would you mind just....?”

Aeryn frowned, looking confused, but after a microt she rallied and hoisted up her tank top.

John’s eyes and fingers explored. “Thank God...” he breathed. It was her, his Aeryn Sun.

“Your fingers are cold, John,” Aeryn moaned, tugging her shirt down. Complaining. So very ‘her’.

“OK, I’m happy, let’s blow this popsicle stand!” he declared.

“I’ve had a belly full of this reality,” Aeryn agreed with a nod and a smile. “Let’s get going before anything else goes wrong.”

@@@

“AERYN! Wake up!” Larraq shouted for the fourth of fifth time. Aeryn stirred groggily.

“What?” she groaned.

“The other you, my Lieutenant Sun, she got the drop on us. I reckon she’s taking her mission to find out about wormholes and stuff pretty seriously. Looks like she dumped us on their Marauder – you said they needed the pod?”

“How long?” Aeryn demanded, suddenly sobering up. As Larraq had said, they were in a Marauder.

“About an arn, I reckon?” Larraq supplied. “Hard to tell when you’ve been stunned.”

“Frell!” Aeryn growled like a bear with a sore head, lurching over to Larraq and cutting the ropes holding his wrists and ankles. Then as he rubbed the life back into his limbs she staggered across to the secondary console.

“Enstor control! This is Peacekeeper Marauder. Do not, repeat do not grant take off to the Leviathan transport pod!”

“Copy, but sorry,  you’re too late. They took off about half an arn ago.”

“Frell!” Aeryn snarled, angry and scared. “We need IMMEDIATE clearance to take off.”

“Are you in any fit state to be flying this thing?” Larraq asked as she fired up the engines, not actually waiting for the take off clearance she had requested.

“Frell off, Larraq!” she snarled back as she punched the engines up to maximum thrust, hurling them up towards orbit.

“John! This is Aeryn! Come in John!” Aeryn shouted into an open comms channel. Just then a familiar blue flash on the planetary horizon made her look up. A wormhole! And crossing into it was the shadow of a ship. A ship that looked very much like a Leviathan transport pod, even from this distance!

“JOHN!” Aeryn shouted in desperation as the shadow of the ship upended and disappeared into the mouth of the wormhole.

Aeryn hit the booster, heading for the wormhole. She was going after him! She was vaguely aware of Larraq growing agitated, trying to force the controls from her hands.

“AERYN!” Larraq shouted, “I thought you said Peacekeeper ships couldn’t survive..!?”

Her mind struggled to process his words, to align what she knew to be true with her desperate need to follow John and D’Argo.

But the point was moot, because just then the wormhole shrivelled and shut. Taking Aeryn’s husband, son and whole life with it.


	10. Epilogue

Lieutenant Sun watched as carefully as she could as John Crichton piloted the pod through the swirling, blue vortex of the wormhole network. How did he know where to turn? How was he piloting? His eyes seemed clenched, his attention on the task at hand. He was muttering to himself, totally absorbed, almost in a trance.

Whatever he was doing, however he was navigating, it seemed a gift unique to him. Aeryn had no feeling for what drove his decisions to take this fork in the wormhole system or that. Whatever the secret of wormholes was, she seriously doubted she would have much to report when she returned to her reality.

The transport pod emerged into normal space without warning or preamble, popping from the wormhole system like a cork from a bottle. Ahead, framed through the view port, was a blue-green, largely aquatic planet, covered in wispy white clouds.

“Home!” John grinned. The infant, D’Argo, clapped and whooped.

Lieutenant Aeryn Sun took a deep breath. Well, she hadn’t found out much about wormholes, and now she had about fifty days here, trying to avoid being detected as an imposter, before she could report back the tiny crumb of intelligence that they did, indeed, exist.

@@@

“They got away, they made a wormhole and they went down it!” Aeryn stated flatly.

“Is that what happened?” Lieutenant Mazko directed his question to Captain Larraq, who was seated beside Aeryn in the debriefing room on the carrier.

“Pretty much...” Larraq confirmed.

“But how!?” Mazko pounded on the desk in frustration. “Your incompetence is...”

“I will remind you...” Larraq leant forward towards Mazko, speaking with low, measured, slightly menacing tones. “That I am your superior officer. And that you should choose your next words carefully.”

Mazko reddened and blustered.... “I... I do apologise for any... what I meant was...”

“Noted,” Larraq leant back again, smiling disarmingly.

“They must have been in communication,” Aeryn supplied, comfortable now that Larraq had asserted his dominance over the intel officer.

“Captain Larraq’s Marauder logs show encrypted comms traffic between it and the Leviathan Pod. When he got there, they had the element of surprise and access to at least one stun gun.” Markova noted, reading from a datapad. Aeryn was genuinely shocked. She would have to ask Larraq about those encrypted comms, but not in front of Mazko!

“As you can see, it’s all in our reports,” Larraq nodded, cool as anything. “So, if you don’t mind, we need to get going. We have our own duties to attend to back at our own carrier.” He stood to leave, Aeryn following his lead.

“Well that went about as well as we could have hoped,” Aeryn sighed as they walked back towards the docking bay and their Marauder. “So what are these duties? I need to be here, on Enstor. If there’s any chance of me getting back into contact with John Crichton...  He has to come back through the wormhole to get back to the Uncharted Territories in our reality... I don’t belong here.” She finished glumly, her train of consciousness trailing off into despair. She would find out about those comms exchanges later. However, knowledge of them only served to fuel her growing suspicion that she needed to be more careful with what she revealed to Larraq.

By her reckoning John should be back in about fifty days in order to keep their appointment with Pilot. She decided to keep that information to herself for now, but she had to be back here then, with a plan ready to stop John heading straight back down the wormhole again without her.

“Don’t worry,” Larraq grinned, pulling her close into a rough, consolatory hug. “I have some ideas about that.”

@@@

Ideas? Oh yes, Larraq was mulling over a lot of ideas. 

About 50 days, Aeryn had implied, before John Crichton and Lieutenant Sun might be expected to return. Fifty days for him to work out a plan as to how to manage matters when they did return was chief among the ideas running through his head. Things had turned out just as he wanted them, just as he and Lieutenant Sun had conspired for them to do.

The wormhole knowledge that his Aeryn might learn aside, he was having the best sex he’d ever had with this Aeryn Sun. He had fifty days, more or less, to come up with plans as to how he might make that situation permanent.

@@@

The end.

To Be Continued in Return To The Uncharted Territories. Or is that 50 Days Of Grey?


End file.
